Again, today I think my title accurately put forth what I am thinking about Bill Simmons' writing today. Bill went 0-4 last week so he follows it up this week with making more rules on gambling. You know a true pro is able to make up rules AFTER he is completely incorrect, no one else is able to have the hindsight that is required to do this. Only professionals. Bill also gives out some more fake awards that we have all started to not look forward to and that makes this such a great column. You ready for more self referential jokes and jokes that have the same punchline as the same one told 100 other times? No? Me neither. Again, no Sports Gal, I just hope she leaves Bill the house in the separation.
ANY windy day, excluding last year's NFC Championship Game and every other game that had been played at the Meadowlands last year and this year of course.
Excluding the 2002 Raiders who almost beat the Patriots in the wind and snow of course. Granted they lost even then but it was close.
If you spent a week writing a November column about the death of home-field advantage, then you ignored it in Round 2 without thinking twice, you just went 0-4 on your playoff picks.
Parity and the fact EVERY SINGLE TEAM that lost at home last weekend played that exact same team at home this season already could help explain this. Basically, the visiting team was not intimidated by the atmosphere because they had been there before. Quit talking about your shitty ass homefield advantage column that was not even about homefield advantage but about the home team not covering the spread. Also, the teams that all lost were not in new stadiums that were under your rules you wrote about in the column, so they had nothing to do with your column.
Just know that I hate myself. Not even Morrissey hated himself this much when he was writing the "Viva Hate" album.
I might as well be Louden Swain in "Vision Quest" right after Carla moved out without telling him.
Will I be telling my kids next December that they're getting a puppy if I finish 11-0 on my 2010 playoff picks?
But how can we top Tony Siragusa's intro from the field at Carolina, when he yelped out a few overstimulated sentences and two of them ended in "baby"? As in, "I'm on the field and you can feel the electricity, baby!" Was he inspired by a "Kojak" rerun or something?
I am immediately adding this to my Sports Czar campaign: If Collinsworth is gig-less for an NFL playoff weekend, either CBS or Fox has to hire him for one of the games or risk a $1,000,000 fine from the FCC.
both won championships as huge underdogs that, in retrospect, make absolutely no sense whatsoever; both received serious officiating help during those titles (Eli for the various holding infractions during the Helmet Catch that weren't called, Daniel-San for winning the All-Valley Karate title on an illegal kick to the face);
How can ESPN let Bill's sour grapes fill up his columns like this? Is his editor mentally deficient and can't seem to see that comments like this ruin any credibility Bill may have and undermine his ability to write one semi-objective column? This holding comment is coming from a guy whose team molested the Colts receivers so badly in the 2004 AFC Championship Game the NFL tightened the rules of pass interference to make sure it did not happen again.
Honestly, I can't tell that Teen Wolf has been on a lot lately because you mention old movies in nearly every single column. If that is the case Victory, Karate Kid, Vision Quest, and Heat has been on a lot lately as well and I would like to find out which stupid channel is playing all of these movies and try to predict when this channel will go under. Here's a hint, it will be soon.
How bad was Jake Delhomme? I sent a text to my buddy Geoff wondering if we were witnessing the worst performance in playoff history ... and he threw three more picks AFTER THAT TEXT! The good news: We have to redo the Mount Rushmore of Faces.
And you thought I could not hate Bill Simmons more.
Let's all lay off the curb kicking of Delhomme for a minute to think about this. Larry Fitzgerald outgained the Panthers in the first half by himself and the defense gave up 5 straight possessions of scoring drives. Delhomme was beyond horrible but if you are going to actually attempt to do any analysis on the game and just not spit shit out of your mouth like you know what you are talking about you, would see partially what affected Delhomme's performance was the defensive and offensive game plan. Delhomme was horrible but the secondary was equally as horrible in the first half. Not to take anything away from the epic Delhomme collapse but there was more going on then just that.
And just for the record, I'm adding this to the Playoff Manifesto next year: "Never lay significant points with a QB whose name rhymes with 'snake.'")
I think Bill should have this added to the Playoff Manifesto: If you ever go 0-fer on a weekend of playoff games, you are not qualified to to a Playoff Manifesto in any fashion.
The Kevin Connolly Award for "Funniest Reaction To Something That Never Should Have Happened To Begin With"
I know, as usual, Bill is reaching for a joke here, but I don't get this. If the interceptions never should have happened, then Jake should not be considered that bad of a quarterback, because he is supposedly better than that. Tell me if I am missing something but the joke doesn't make sense if you don't assume Jake is good...which he actually is not, but regardless, I can't have Delhomme on any Mount Rushmore's of anything for Bill Simmons. I want this to all go away.
Bronze (to U. Howard in Philly): "Damn you. I just realized that you went 0-4. It's a good thing you're funny or else I'd stop listening and reading religiously. Keep making with the laugh laugh. You're like that girl we all dated for a while in our early- to mid-20s that was only good for one thing. She couldn't cook, couldn't take care of a pet or a plant, barely could read. But she did one thing well."
U. Howard in Philly, if you exist, you are incredibly incorrect. Bill is not funny. The one thing he actually does well is cheer with his favorite team, which puts him in the same company as every other diehard fan in the world.
For the poor Tennessee fans ... you could actually hear their sphincters collectively tighten as that game dragged along and the mistakes and bad signs kept mounting. Nobody knows that haunting sound better than Red Sox fans; that's the way Fenway sounded during every Big Game That's Not Going Quite The Way We Want from Yaz through Nomar.
Nobody knows that sound better than Red Sox fans. They just knew something was going to go wrong as they won 2 World Series in the past 5 seasons. It just had to happen. No one knows being tortured like Red Sox fans, despite the fact the team is currently very, very good, they still want to be known as tortured.
As Bill Simmons would say, the Red Sox fans are similar to a kid who got his ass kicked throughout high school but then hit puberty in college and made the college football team, but keeps reminding everyone what a wimp he was in high school for some reason.
Red Sox fans and the team have had it worse than everyone, you think Jewish people in Germany had it bad during the Holocaust? Try being a Red Sox fan, it was much worse I am sure.
I was there. I can still see him leading off first base and being utterly convinced that he could steal it, even though we had 86 years of bad luck working against us. We all felt that way. It was weird. I cannot explain it. Like we knew.
That's because Red Sox fans are omnipotent and they know EVERYTHING. Bill thinks they are the most special fan base in the entire world because they KNEW. They just knew.
I know the home team is done from my pre-2004 Fenway experiences. It's a lock. So how do we explain that? Is there a term we can come up with? Maybe CISSESP (Collective In-Stadium Sports ESP)? I believe in ghosts, I believe in bad karma, and I absolutely believe in CISSESP.
Bill, I believe this is killing me, (a smile goes away from my face), but I am sure you could try to be a movie star if you could just get away from ESPN.
(Little odd the line in Piano Man that starts with "Bill, I believe this is killing me..." came on the IPod as I was getting ready to type that sentence. So just paraphrased it and let everyone know I have Billy Joel in my ITunes.)
being officially unable to tell the difference between the NFL playoffs and March Madness
The only difference I can see is that I want to watch every single game of March Madness and I don't care about half the games of the NFL Playoffs, no one in my office really cares about the NFL playoffs as much as they do March Madness, and there are 63 games to entertain me in March and only 11 games in the NFL playoffs. Other than that, great observation.
I love the NFL Playoffs but after my team gets eliminated/doesn't make it, I find it hard to follow as closely, meanwhile for a Texas-Memphis game I will skip an important event to watch in March. It may only be me though.
5. Take it from someone who got crapped on by a bird right before the 2004 baseball playoffs: Any time something weird is going on with birds and sports, you roll with it.
You got crapped on by a bird before the 2004 baseball playoffs? You have to mention these things when they happen Bill! If you don't mention them at the time, at least bring them up a few years down the road so we can understand your self absorbed/referential humor. I am not sure you have mentioned this event since at least last week's column.
Sorry, Pittsburgh fans, you're stuck with me this weekend. You may now light your Terrible Towels on fire.
Hahahahahahah!! That's like when you say, "I will now light myself on fire," but different because you put a different word in place for "myself!" What a great and original column closing sentence! Brilliant!
(Swallows cyanide capsule)
6 comments:
First, nothing wrong with Billy Joel, especially "Piano Man". Great song.
Second, this was included in Simmons's "From the Mag" column this week:
"Q: Has any movie ever predicted the future of sports better than BASEketball did, in 1998? Ridiculous end zone celebrations, stadiums named after brands, teams jumping cities for money. I remember watching it thinking it was outlandish to name a stadium after Trojan or Tampax. Now I could see it.
-Aaron, Denver
SG: Who knew Trey Parker and Matt Stone would be the George Orwells of pro sports? I want to see which league will cave first and sell its championship game or series to a sponsor. You know it's coming. Would you ever have guessed we'd be saying the "Allstate Sugar Bowl"? This could be one more thing Gary Bettman screws up. We may be headed for the Levitra Stanley Cup Final."
BASEketball, a fine movie, came out in 1998. According to Wikipedia (which I trust for this kind of information), the Sugar Bowl was sponsored by USF&G from 1987-1995, Nokia from 1995-2006, and Allstate from 2006-today. I distinctly remember hearing it called "The Nokia Sugar Bowl" back in the 1990s.
Parker and Stone may have had insight (they are both brilliant, after all), but Simmons cites the absolute worst example of this. Bowl games and stadiums have included company names in their titles for at least 15 years, so Parker and Stone simply chose funnier companies to use in the film.
You are exactly right, I actually have the mailbag bookmarked but decided not to attack it this week. I think Parker and Stone are geniuses but they definitely did not come up with the idea of using sponsors to name stadiums and sporting events. They were doing what they do incredibly well, which is to take it to the level of absurdity where it is very funny. I think that was the joke, that there were odd company names for stadiums, not that there were company names.
I should have not missed this, because there have been company sponsored bowl games and stadiums for about as long as I can remember. Bill does not watch college sports that often, so he misses things like this. These bowl games have to have companies sponsor them and they have been doing this forever. I love it when he talks about college sports because I actually feel like his readers are more knowledgeable than he is on that topic.
Billy Joel, "Piano Man" is a great song and it was weird it came on as I was typing that sentence. I do love that song.
Early Billy Joel stuff is the shizznit. I learn that more as I grow older.
I think that Peter King, Bill, and TMQ have made some sort of death pact, seeing which one can cause a brain seizure and death among the readers of internet sites. Their collective articles since Xmas have been truly putrid.
I think the Steve Smith thing wasn't so much about the fact Jake threw the interceptions, just that interceptions and the lose sholdn't be happening in general. Of course it's Bill and I am probably giving him way to much credit.
I do like early Billy Joel a whole lot, my favorite album is easily The Stranger. Like most other artists, his later work sometimes left a little bit to be desired.
I think all three of those are about to cause me a seizure, so whatever death pact they have planned is definitely working at this point. Peter bombards me with useless everyday bullshit that he "thinks," TMQ doesn't understand basic principles of football strategy, and Simmons is like the crazy uncle who tells the same joke over and over at a Christmas gathering.
If he was suggesting the interceptions should never have happened then I can understand that or if he was saying the loss should not have happened I can get on that train as well. The Giants should not have lost either and now I am stuck with an NFC Championship game I could borderline not that care that much about. I really believe the AFC Championship is going to decide the winner of the Super Bowl. Of course, crazier things have happened because I really doubt the Ravens ability to score sometimes and I could envision an offensive collapse for the Steelers as well.
I think what would get my interest is if both Kurt Warner and Donovan McNabb got injured and we had a Kevin Kolb and Matt Leinart show down to determine who gets to go to the Super Bowl. Then I would definitely watch the NFC Championship Game.
Julius Peppers is saying he wants out of Caolina. As a Panther guy, is this going to be a big hit, or is Peppers a one dimensional pass rusher nowadays?
I saw a comment from the GM, who must have read a column by all three of our Death Pacters. Peppers has said he wants to leave not because of money, but because he hates the Panthers dfensive scheme and wants one he can be better suited in. (Ok yes this does sound like "Me want some sacks and be famous", but whatever) The GM says "I'm disappointed in what the agent has had to say, since we've been trying to keep an open line of communication."
WTF does that mean? Peppers doesn't care about teh communication, and apparently not your money either, since he can make a bundle as a free agent I'm sure. Unless teh communication is "Yeah we plan on going to a 3-4" who gives a shit?
I am probably in the minority on Panther fans because I never really believed Peppers was one of the best pass rushers in the league. Sure he got his sacks but teams were able to actually use one blocker and a guy to chip against him. I really never felt like he consistently made a huge difference in every game. He was kind of touch and go. That being said, this is a big story because he is from NC, went to school here, and he is the most popular defensive player.
For some reason he seems to think he is better in the 3-4 rather than a 4-3 and I just don't agree with this. I have been critical of the way the Panthers have handled the defense but on the D Line they move Peppers around and drop him into coverage at times. I think they use him well. He wants to be a stand up LB in a 3-4 system and I don't see it. I don't think Peppers is completely into pass rushing, I think he wants to do other things but I think he is too heavy, and to be honest, too tall to be a stand up LB in a 3-4. The problem is after 7 years, I am still not convinced he is on the same level as Jared Allen and Dwight Freeney as just a difference maker.
I would like to see him get franchised and traded but now the Panthers have to find a trading partner that runs the 3-4, who is willing to give up draft picks. That will be difficult. I really don't think he cares about money, I have no idea what he cares about really and that is the problem I have with him.
If the Panthers lose Peppers they need to get something in return and probably redo the entire d line because there is no one else on the roster who is a pass rusher.
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