I tried to ignore this response from the St. Louis mayor to the idea the Cardinals are the most hateable team in the 2014 MLB playoffs. I tried. The response from the St. Louis mayor just sat there in my Bookmarks staring at me everyday, wondering why I can't muster up a response to that response. I have a hard time not responding when I disagree with someone. It's a flaw of mine. On Twitter if someone Tweets something stupid at me I usually make a joke back or ignore it completely. It's a lot harder for me to ignore it completely, because as I'm told on a weekly basis, "You don't have to respond, just let it go." I can not. So I sit and stew over a Tweet sent my direction that is an obvious troll attempt and I know if I respond then I am just buying into the troll game. It's not that I am argumentative, it is more like I can't let someone who has stated something factually incorrectly stand uncorrected.
I had a sportswriter email me one time about something I had written here about something he had written (you know, like I do all the time) and we went back and forth over email for an entire Saturday. I had to make him see my point, which wasn't going to happen. He didn't want to see my point, he wanted to point out what he really meant to write even though he didn't write what he meant to write. I kept pointing out he didn't write what he claims he meant to write, so my criticism was fair. He kept pointing out what he MEANT to write, so my criticism was unfair. But that's not what he wrote...and so it went on and on. I had a hard time pulling myself from that conversation.
So anyway, this response from the St. Louis mayor has been sitting there, just begging me to post something about it. I have given in. I can't ignore this troll attempt by the St. Louis mayor (or by whoever really wrote this response). It's impossible for me to do.
The Wall Street Journal recently released its second-annual Major League Baseball Hateability Index
in which it ranked the 10 playoff teams for 2014 “in order of general
loathsomeness.” The rankings were based on 10 essential categories to
haters including drug suspensions, “ridiculous beards” and, of course,
the time-honored crime of winning too much.
Unfortunately what comes with "winning too much" is the fan base believing their team is more special and unique than any other team simply because their team wins a lot of games. Winning breeds cockiness and cockiness breeds loathsomeness.
On the strength of its pennant collection and rabid fan base, which both
travels to opposing stadiums and refers to itself as a “nation,” my
hometown St. Louis Cardinals came in first.
As I have said before regarding other situations like this one, it's not that the Cardinals necessarily travel to opposing stadiums, it's that there are fans of the Cardinals who live in the same city or area where the opposing stadium is located. Thousands of Red Sox fans don't travel to Atlanta to come to a Red Sox-Braves game, these people often live in the city of Atlanta and want to cheer for the Red Sox team they don't get to see play very often.
You see, while you might think of St. Louis as flyover country and not
pay us much due, we’re kind of a big deal come October on Major League
Baseball diamonds.
See, this is overly-douchey and is a great example of why some people find the Cardinals loathsome. It's cockiness dressed up as false modesty. Because St. Louis is known as flyover country and that's why it's not a tourist attraction at all. No one comes to see the Gateway Arch or anything. You see, the Cardinals get their due. They get a lot of due. The public is aware the Cardinals get their due because douchey Cardinals fans like the mayor of St. Louis are constantly reminding everyone just how great the Cardinals and their fan base are.
In fact, we’re kind of a big deal for a number of reasons.
This sentence is a great example of why the Cardinals came in first in the hateability index. Nobody said the Cardinals weren't a good team, but in response to a hateability index that partly factors in how many pennants that team has won over the past 10 years, the mayor of St. Louis refutes this index by reminding readers how many pennants the Cardinals have won. His response to "we shouldn't be hated" is reminding readers of exactly why the Cardinals tend to be hated. It seems like the mayor of St. Louis doesn't have a firm grasp on exactly why the Cardinals are hated. This. This writing is why the Cardinals are seen as hated. Nobody likes false modesty and refuting the Cardinals' fans think too much of themselves by saying "scoreboard" only serves to prove the point of the hateability index results.
Thus, I feel compelled to deliver a simple message to America: We’re sorry.
Sure, we’re sorry the Cardinals have won 11 World Series championships, two since 2006.
No, we are sorry you are coming off like a smarmy braggart. You know, essentially what you are writing this column to prove you as a Cardinals fan are not.
Indeed, we’re sorry that New York and San Francisco are 2.3 times and
1.7 times respectively more expensive to live in than the St. Louis
metro area.
Just don't be black and live in the St. Louis metro area or else one of two things will happen. You will get shot by a police officer or you will be quarantined in East St. Louis where the city prefers to keep their unwanted citizens. Also, how expensive it is to live in St. Louis has nothing to do with sports or why the the Cardinals are at the top of the hateability index. Whichever department in the city of St. Louis gave you this information for the purposes of this column probably didn't know you were going to use it to make a strawman argument like this.
We’re sorry for producing one of the world’s best-selling batteries (Energizer)
Oh, I didn't know St. Louis produced one of the world's best-selling batteries. How can anyone hate a city that produces so many batteries which take up landfill space and don't decompose? Not to mention, Town and Country, Missouri is actually where the Energizer headquarters are. It is a suburb of St. Louis, so I guess if I can make a reference to Ferguson, Missouri then I can let this one go.
and two of the 10 best-selling beers in the world—Budweiser and Bud Light.
Which is the beer that should only be used to put in the cups during beer pong to punish your opponent when you land a ping-pong ball in one of their cups. But no, congratulations on producing one of the 10 best-selling beers that is losing market share to craft beers and other beers that don't taste like watered down Sprite with a slight twist of cat urine.
We’re sorry that the four largest metro areas in the nation lost nearly
25,000 financial-service jobs between January 2007 and September 2012,
while St. Louis added more than 5,500 in the sector.
(Mayor of St. Louis calls his Economic Development Director) "Find me some jobs that we have gained and other cities have lost."
(Economic Development Director) "We have a lot more police now and military supply sales have gone up in the past month due to Fer---"
(Mayor of St. Louis) "No, I want gains in jobs that people like."
(Economic Development Director) "We have gained jobs in the financial services sector over the past five years."
(Mayor of St. Louis) "Shoot that information to my intern so he can include it in this letter I am writing that he is actually writing for me. Everyone loves people who work in the financial services sector of the economy. America doesn't feel at all like these people make huge income and profits on the back of working class Americans through shady deals and investments."
That guy Jon Hamm? Yeah, we’re sorry for raising him here and sending him out into the world for your entertainment delight.
That's weak. Where does Jon Hamm live now, at least when he isn't being trotted out like a mascot to some St. Louis sporting event? Oh yeah, he has moved the hell out of St. Louis and lives in California now. A lot of cities can take credit for celebrities who were born there, but don't live there anymore. The key to proving your city isn't shitty is if the celebrity still lives there. The Charlotte area can take credit for K-Ci and JoJo, but I'm not sure anyone wants to do that.
We’re sorry for our diverse community in that more Bosnians—over 60,000—call St. Louis home than anywhere outside of Bosnia.
Whoops, that's 59,999 Bosnians. Someone just got shot for carrying a pack of gum that a St. Louis police officer thought was a pipe bomb.
But seriously, who the hell writes, "You can't hate our baseball team because we have a lot of Bosnians who live here"? What is that? So far, the mayor of St. Louis has said, "Scoreboard" and "Look at all our Bosnians" as to why St. Louis shouldn't be hated. I would venture the mayor can count the number of these Bosnians he really knows on one hand.
We’re sorry for Forest Park, our beautiful 1,300-acre urban park
comprises an award-winning zoo, science center, art and history museums,
golf courses, ice rink and green space.
This has nothing to do with sports. Clearly the mayor was too busy doing other shit and didn't understand the hateability index had to do with sports. Bringing up points that have nothing to do with sports is stupid and proves the mayor of St. Louis doesn't really understand what's supposed to be refuted.
We’re sorry for not only being home to 18 Fortune 1000 companies, but
for developing one of the most promising and fastest-growing ecosystems
for startups and entrepreneurs, delivering innovations that are being
used by businesses and consumers world-wide. You know, like that pesky
social-media platform Twitter (St.
Louisan Jack Dorsey
)
Lives in San Francisco and graduated college in New York.
or credit-card processing device Square (St. Louisan Jim McKelvey).
Which is a company based on St. Louis. McKelvey does have several businesses in St. Louis though, so in terms of proving the Cardinals shouldn't be hated because a rich dude owns businesses in the city of St. Louis, this is a big win for the mayor.
We’re sorry that at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Richard
Blechynden served tea with ice, thus inventing iced tea (although not
the rapper/actor Ice-T).
Well, the intern who did the research on this one probably should be reprimanded. Blechynden probably didn't invent iced tea.
The point is that we here in the Midwest are not a boastful people.
Except you just spent the entirety of this response to the hateability index bragging about how great St. Louis is and randomly bringing up famous people who hail from the city even though that has nothing to do with sports. Other than all your bragging, you are not a boastful people. 60,000 Bosnians would agree.
We’re humble
Nope, a listing of the team's and city's achievements is not being humble. Might want to call the intern to get you a dictionary to look up the word "humble."
and quietly go about our business, inventing the things you use every
day, entertaining you, finding employment for your citizens and handing
you losses on the baseball field regularly.
Yep, this sentence isn't "quietly going about our business." It's an example of bragging and then desperately trying to bring the discussion back around to sports when that's not at all what this entire response was about. The hateability index was not about not hating St. Louis for non-sports related reasons, which seems to be the point the mayor of St. Louis has missed entirely.
(We’re especially sorry to Chicago.)
This is why you are #1. Exactly why.
Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful here in St. Louis. But if you do, just know that we’re sorry. Go Cards!
The intern who did all the research, wrote and proofread this response, and then emailed it to the mayor certainly needs to step it up a notch and work on his/her reading comprehension skills. Either that or this is a huge troll job by the intern who wanted to prove exactly why the Cardinals ended up #1 on the hateability index by bringing up the points that were made in this insufferable, strawman introducing, "best fans in baseball so who can hate us?" response.
Very poor showing here by the intern.
Showing posts with label idiots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idiots. Show all posts
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Thursday, April 4, 2013
8 comments Idiocy: A Bleacher Report Specialty
There is some good stuff on Bleacher Report, blah, blah, blah. I always disclaim that. There's also shit on the site. Today's article is an example of the shit that can be found on Bleacher Report. I'm not perfect when it comes to discussing sports, but there are several types of comments that baseball and football fans can make which irritates the shit out of me. These comments usually assume that sports are like video games or come from sports fans who just come off as annoyingly simplistic. Three of these comments are:
1. "Let's draft Quarterback X in the fifth round and develop him to where he can be the starter in a few years."
On it's face, this doesn't seem like an annoying comment at all. It is the assumptions behind this comment that annoys me. It's the speaker's assumption a team can draft a player and then start "developing him" to be the starter in a few years. It's as if a lack of talent or the mental makeup to play the quarterback position can be overcome with some TLC and teaching. It just doesn't work that way all the time. It's not simple to take a fifth round pick, teach him to be a quarterback and then spit out a starting quarterback in a few years. Yes, it can happen, but this statement and the assumption of some magical "developmental technique" that can take a 5th round pick and turn him into a starter in a matter of three years annoys me.
2. "With all these linebackers we have, what about running the 3-4 defense?"
Oh sure, let's just fucking turn the entire defensive system around today. That doesn't sound like it would be difficult or take any sort of preparation or change in personnel to do. I read this comment all the time and it never fails to annoy me. There is more required to run a 3-4 defense than to have four good linebackers. This type of comment always seems to assume a team would need no other position adjustment to run a 3-4 defense than having four good linebackers on the roster. A team needs 3-4 linebackers who can rush the passer, a nose guard who can hold down the middle and keep the offensive linemen off the linebackers, and 3-4 defensive ends who can rush the passer but also hold the end. It's a different set of skills required for defensive players and the fact a team has four quality linebackers doesn't make the move easy. Throw in the defensive coordinator for a team may not have experience running a 3-4 defense and the comment becomes more annoying. More NFL teams are running hybrid defenses, but to blindly suggest a team just magically switch to a 3-4 defense in training camp as the magical key that turns the team around is stupidity.
3. "Let's send Player X down to the minor leagues and teach him to play a different position."
Baseball isn't a video game. You can't just send a player down to the minor leagues and teach him to play a new position and then call him up a year later to see him playing extremely well at that position. It's rare for a player who has played his entire career at catcher can just become a second baseman in a year's time. Well, that is unless you write for Bleacher Report, in which case teaching a 6'4" 230 pound catcher to play second base is just a piece of cake.
Dan Uggla's struggles are no secret for Atlanta Braves fans.
Uggla has been bad over his two years with the Braves, but he improved last year in terms of getting on-base and led the National League in walks. He's been bad in Spring Training again, but he has always struck out a lot and not hit for great average. It's not like he would improve as he got older. I'm still fine with him at second base and have faith he can at least continue to get on-base at the .348 clip with more power than he showed last year. I think Braves fans just tend to get in a panic sometimes.
Hitting .227 with 55 home runs and 160 RBI in his two years with the Braves, Uggla hasn't exactly lived up to his five-year, $62-million contract.
So the solution is to bench him or trade him? What could the Braves gain from having a non-contact hitter who is a poor defender on the bench? What could they possibly get through trade that would relieve them of Uggla's salary and make the team better? Those are my three questions that have no satisfactory answers.
With power throughout the Braves' order, fans aren't going to be patient if Uggla continues to struggle. And, let's face it, can you blame them?
Since Uggla is relied on for power, wouldn't it make more sense for Braves fans to be more patient since one of the biggest things Uggla provides (power) isn't in short supply on the Braves roster? They may not rely on him to hit home runs, so they can afford to be more patient with him.
Before you think this is an article intended to bash Uggla, here are some of the good things he's done for the Braves.
It's not an article to bash Uggla, but an article to bench Uggla and replace him with a catcher. That's so different from bashing him.
In 2012, Uggla batted .262 with runners in scoring position and .308 with runners in scoring position and two outs. So he can hit in the clutch.
Clutchiness is Uggla's thing. Who needs this in the everyday batting order? The Braves don't, that's for sure.
He brings power to the second base position, which is not seen much in MLB. Robinson Cano, Aaron Hill and Rickie Weeks come to mind.
Uggla had 19 home runs last year. That's good and one of the good reasons (his shockingly improved defense last year is another) to keep him in the lineup.
He also started and ended 2012 well, batting .271 in April and .280 in September.
Uggla has it in him to do well, but he seems unable to get things right in his head during the middle parts of the season.
Not entirely true. Uggla hit .293/.369/.586 during July 2011 and .340/.405/.670 during August 2011. For his career he has struggled the most in June, but he doesn't seem to consistently struggle during the middle of the baseball season over his career. He did struggle mightily in 2012, but I don't know if his middle season struggles are a trend or not.
Then there's the strikeouts.
He ranked fourth in the National League with 168 strikeouts, striking out 96 times with the bases empty.
Is it better to strikeout with the bases empty or better to strikeout with runners on-base? Uggla struck out a lot, but he also got on-base at a .348 clip and led the National League in walks.
Simply put, Uggla either just can't get the job done anymore or his brain is getting in the way of him hitting.
I'm glad we discussed this. Now what's the solution to this problem? Players making $39 million over the next three seasons generally just don't go away and it is hard for other teams to want to take on that salary for a declining player through trade.
Including this year, Uggla still has three years and $39 million left on his contract. But can the Braves afford another three years of Uggla's subpar performances?
These are the deep questions only the writers of Bleacher Report are willing to discuss. Can the Braves afford to pay a player $13 million when he doesn't play well? Can ANY MLB team afford to pay a player $13 million for a subpar performance? Probably not.
While there is nobody in the farm system that is ready to take over at second should Uggla continue to struggle, there are other possibilities.
Because any time an expensive player isn't performing up to snuff, it makes more sense to bench that player and then spend money and prospects to go find another player who can play that position.
Should the opportunity present itself before the trade deadline,
"Before the trade deadline," meaning before July 31st? If the Braves are going to replace Dan Uggla why would they potentially wait until July 31st to do so? This makes not of sense.
guys like Ben Zobrist and Omar Infante could be had for the right price.
So the idea is to replace .220/.348/.384 with 19 home runs, 78 RBI's, 94 walks, and 168 strikeouts with Omar Infante who hit .274/.300/.419 with 12 home runs, 53 RBI's, 21 walks and 65 strikeouts last year? How would this improve the team exactly? Presumably the Braves can't trade Uggla, or they would have to eat a lot of his contract, but they are free to take on $4 million more for Infante who at best is only a moderate upgrade and a free agent after the season? So how is the team improved for 2014 with Uggla one year older and still on the roster next year? So Uggla gets benched and then the Braves have the same issue next year. I don't think Infante is a solution.
Ben Zobrist would be an upgrade, but he also costs $5.5 million in 2013, $7 million in 2014, and $7.5 million in 2015. It's not very likely Zobrist could be had for cheap either. Assuming the Braves could trade Uggla, they would still have to eat at the very, very least half of his contract (which I doubt they could even get a team to cover that much). That means they would be investing $39.5 million in their second base position over the next three years at the absolute least, while giving up prospects for Zobrist. Interestingly, that's how much they currently have invested in Dan Uggla except they don't have to trade any prospects to get him.
So Zobrist would be an upgrade (which I would admit) at the cost of prospects and money during a three year span when the Braves will need to try to re-sign, sign, or pay through arbitration Brian McCann, Kris Medlen, Jason Heyward, Craig Kimbrel, Freddie Freeman, Andrelton Simmons. See the issue there? Uggla stinks, but the Braves can't afford to spend more money on the second base position over the next three years and expect to keep what they consider the core of their team.
With both slated to be free agents after this year, the Braves could put a decent package together to get one of the two during the stretch run.
Again, Zobrist isn't a free agent next year. There is a team option for 2014 and 2015. To trade prospects for Zobrist and not exercise these options would be stupid in my opinion. Meanwhile Omar Infante at this point doesn't seem like an upgrade. Plus, after the Braves have benched Dan Uggla should they just turn to him to be the starter in 2014? If you bench Uggla and replace him with Omar Infante then Uggla has to be traded, right? Who plays second base in 2014 for the Braves? Don't worry, the author has a really, really stupid suggestion for 2014.
Or the Braves could send Evan Gattis down to the minors to learn how to play second base.
Worst idea ever. Non-Braves fans have no idea who Evan Gattis is. That's fine. He has an interesting back story that is irrelevant for what I am going to write here. More importantly, he is a 26 year old catcher/outfielder who stands 6'4" and weighs 230 pounds. He crushes the baseball and the Braves are desperately trying to find a way for him to make the active roster, hence the move from catcher to left field. He is not quite the defensive catcher an MLB team would look for and he probably isn't the best full-time left fielder a team would look for either. But he mashes the baseball. A move to second base over the next year is not a good idea for Evan Gattis to make. Simply put, second base is not the place for a 6'4" 230 pound ex-catcher.
While there would be a major adjustment period for Gattis,
This adjustment period potentially being "his entire Major League career." When Dan Uggla is brought in as a defensive replacement, that's never good news. The funny part is the author wants to trade for Infante or Zobrist (he never tells us what will be done with Uggla, so I assume he will very covertly be murdered in order to be removed from the Braves payroll) and then put an ex-catcher at second base. Baseball is a video game apparently.
it could be beneficial for the Braves because he's hitting .438 with two home runs and 10 RBI during spring training.
So sending a player who is hitting the cover off of the ball down to AAA to learn a new position he has never played before would be beneficial to the Braves this year? How can that be beneficial to the Braves when Gattis wouldn't even be on the active roster? I have so many questions and no answers that can satisfy my curiosity as to where this bad idea came from.
If Gattis could learn how to play second base, that would solve two problems:
If Jason Heyward could be cloned it would solve many problems as well. If Dan Uggla could find the fountain of youth that would solve a few issues. If we could teach birds to carry the heavy weight of a human being and train them to fly to a specific destination then we could rid ourselves of air travel costs. If dogs could speak then we wouldn't have to wonder why they are randomly barking at a wall. There are so many "ifs" and so few answers.
It would provide him with the opportunity to be in the lineup
So would carrying him on the roster as a backup left fielder/catcher/pinch hitter this year. Sending Gattis down to the minors to learn a new position, how exactly does this provide Gattis a chance to be in the lineup? If Uggla is struggling this year then shouldn't the idea to be to replace Uggla this year, not a year from now? There are much easier ways to get a player's bat in the lineup than send him down to the minors for a year to learn a new position. In fact, sending Gattis down to the minors is a specific effort to take his bat out of the lineup for this year when he is tearing the cover off the ball.
and it would solve the Uggla problem all in one.
No, it wouldn't solve the Uggla problem because Uggla would still be on the roster and still cost $13 million per year. Now if you have an idea on how to trade Uggla, get value for him in a trade, get most of his contract off the books and also find a quality second basemen, then that's a great suggestion. Suggesting the Braves move a 230 pound catcher to second base is not a real suggestion and this is just embarrassing for you to even suggest.
1. "Let's draft Quarterback X in the fifth round and develop him to where he can be the starter in a few years."
On it's face, this doesn't seem like an annoying comment at all. It is the assumptions behind this comment that annoys me. It's the speaker's assumption a team can draft a player and then start "developing him" to be the starter in a few years. It's as if a lack of talent or the mental makeup to play the quarterback position can be overcome with some TLC and teaching. It just doesn't work that way all the time. It's not simple to take a fifth round pick, teach him to be a quarterback and then spit out a starting quarterback in a few years. Yes, it can happen, but this statement and the assumption of some magical "developmental technique" that can take a 5th round pick and turn him into a starter in a matter of three years annoys me.
2. "With all these linebackers we have, what about running the 3-4 defense?"
Oh sure, let's just fucking turn the entire defensive system around today. That doesn't sound like it would be difficult or take any sort of preparation or change in personnel to do. I read this comment all the time and it never fails to annoy me. There is more required to run a 3-4 defense than to have four good linebackers. This type of comment always seems to assume a team would need no other position adjustment to run a 3-4 defense than having four good linebackers on the roster. A team needs 3-4 linebackers who can rush the passer, a nose guard who can hold down the middle and keep the offensive linemen off the linebackers, and 3-4 defensive ends who can rush the passer but also hold the end. It's a different set of skills required for defensive players and the fact a team has four quality linebackers doesn't make the move easy. Throw in the defensive coordinator for a team may not have experience running a 3-4 defense and the comment becomes more annoying. More NFL teams are running hybrid defenses, but to blindly suggest a team just magically switch to a 3-4 defense in training camp as the magical key that turns the team around is stupidity.
3. "Let's send Player X down to the minor leagues and teach him to play a different position."
Baseball isn't a video game. You can't just send a player down to the minor leagues and teach him to play a new position and then call him up a year later to see him playing extremely well at that position. It's rare for a player who has played his entire career at catcher can just become a second baseman in a year's time. Well, that is unless you write for Bleacher Report, in which case teaching a 6'4" 230 pound catcher to play second base is just a piece of cake.
Dan Uggla's struggles are no secret for Atlanta Braves fans.
Uggla has been bad over his two years with the Braves, but he improved last year in terms of getting on-base and led the National League in walks. He's been bad in Spring Training again, but he has always struck out a lot and not hit for great average. It's not like he would improve as he got older. I'm still fine with him at second base and have faith he can at least continue to get on-base at the .348 clip with more power than he showed last year. I think Braves fans just tend to get in a panic sometimes.
Hitting .227 with 55 home runs and 160 RBI in his two years with the Braves, Uggla hasn't exactly lived up to his five-year, $62-million contract.
So the solution is to bench him or trade him? What could the Braves gain from having a non-contact hitter who is a poor defender on the bench? What could they possibly get through trade that would relieve them of Uggla's salary and make the team better? Those are my three questions that have no satisfactory answers.
With power throughout the Braves' order, fans aren't going to be patient if Uggla continues to struggle. And, let's face it, can you blame them?
Since Uggla is relied on for power, wouldn't it make more sense for Braves fans to be more patient since one of the biggest things Uggla provides (power) isn't in short supply on the Braves roster? They may not rely on him to hit home runs, so they can afford to be more patient with him.
Before you think this is an article intended to bash Uggla, here are some of the good things he's done for the Braves.
It's not an article to bash Uggla, but an article to bench Uggla and replace him with a catcher. That's so different from bashing him.
In 2012, Uggla batted .262 with runners in scoring position and .308 with runners in scoring position and two outs. So he can hit in the clutch.
Clutchiness is Uggla's thing. Who needs this in the everyday batting order? The Braves don't, that's for sure.
He brings power to the second base position, which is not seen much in MLB. Robinson Cano, Aaron Hill and Rickie Weeks come to mind.
Uggla had 19 home runs last year. That's good and one of the good reasons (his shockingly improved defense last year is another) to keep him in the lineup.
He also started and ended 2012 well, batting .271 in April and .280 in September.
Uggla has it in him to do well, but he seems unable to get things right in his head during the middle parts of the season.
Not entirely true. Uggla hit .293/.369/.586 during July 2011 and .340/.405/.670 during August 2011. For his career he has struggled the most in June, but he doesn't seem to consistently struggle during the middle of the baseball season over his career. He did struggle mightily in 2012, but I don't know if his middle season struggles are a trend or not.
Then there's the strikeouts.
He ranked fourth in the National League with 168 strikeouts, striking out 96 times with the bases empty.
Is it better to strikeout with the bases empty or better to strikeout with runners on-base? Uggla struck out a lot, but he also got on-base at a .348 clip and led the National League in walks.
Simply put, Uggla either just can't get the job done anymore or his brain is getting in the way of him hitting.
I'm glad we discussed this. Now what's the solution to this problem? Players making $39 million over the next three seasons generally just don't go away and it is hard for other teams to want to take on that salary for a declining player through trade.
Including this year, Uggla still has three years and $39 million left on his contract. But can the Braves afford another three years of Uggla's subpar performances?
These are the deep questions only the writers of Bleacher Report are willing to discuss. Can the Braves afford to pay a player $13 million when he doesn't play well? Can ANY MLB team afford to pay a player $13 million for a subpar performance? Probably not.
While there is nobody in the farm system that is ready to take over at second should Uggla continue to struggle, there are other possibilities.
Because any time an expensive player isn't performing up to snuff, it makes more sense to bench that player and then spend money and prospects to go find another player who can play that position.
Should the opportunity present itself before the trade deadline,
"Before the trade deadline," meaning before July 31st? If the Braves are going to replace Dan Uggla why would they potentially wait until July 31st to do so? This makes not of sense.
guys like Ben Zobrist and Omar Infante could be had for the right price.
So the idea is to replace .220/.348/.384 with 19 home runs, 78 RBI's, 94 walks, and 168 strikeouts with Omar Infante who hit .274/.300/.419 with 12 home runs, 53 RBI's, 21 walks and 65 strikeouts last year? How would this improve the team exactly? Presumably the Braves can't trade Uggla, or they would have to eat a lot of his contract, but they are free to take on $4 million more for Infante who at best is only a moderate upgrade and a free agent after the season? So how is the team improved for 2014 with Uggla one year older and still on the roster next year? So Uggla gets benched and then the Braves have the same issue next year. I don't think Infante is a solution.
Ben Zobrist would be an upgrade, but he also costs $5.5 million in 2013, $7 million in 2014, and $7.5 million in 2015. It's not very likely Zobrist could be had for cheap either. Assuming the Braves could trade Uggla, they would still have to eat at the very, very least half of his contract (which I doubt they could even get a team to cover that much). That means they would be investing $39.5 million in their second base position over the next three years at the absolute least, while giving up prospects for Zobrist. Interestingly, that's how much they currently have invested in Dan Uggla except they don't have to trade any prospects to get him.
So Zobrist would be an upgrade (which I would admit) at the cost of prospects and money during a three year span when the Braves will need to try to re-sign, sign, or pay through arbitration Brian McCann, Kris Medlen, Jason Heyward, Craig Kimbrel, Freddie Freeman, Andrelton Simmons. See the issue there? Uggla stinks, but the Braves can't afford to spend more money on the second base position over the next three years and expect to keep what they consider the core of their team.
With both slated to be free agents after this year, the Braves could put a decent package together to get one of the two during the stretch run.
Again, Zobrist isn't a free agent next year. There is a team option for 2014 and 2015. To trade prospects for Zobrist and not exercise these options would be stupid in my opinion. Meanwhile Omar Infante at this point doesn't seem like an upgrade. Plus, after the Braves have benched Dan Uggla should they just turn to him to be the starter in 2014? If you bench Uggla and replace him with Omar Infante then Uggla has to be traded, right? Who plays second base in 2014 for the Braves? Don't worry, the author has a really, really stupid suggestion for 2014.
Or the Braves could send Evan Gattis down to the minors to learn how to play second base.
Worst idea ever. Non-Braves fans have no idea who Evan Gattis is. That's fine. He has an interesting back story that is irrelevant for what I am going to write here. More importantly, he is a 26 year old catcher/outfielder who stands 6'4" and weighs 230 pounds. He crushes the baseball and the Braves are desperately trying to find a way for him to make the active roster, hence the move from catcher to left field. He is not quite the defensive catcher an MLB team would look for and he probably isn't the best full-time left fielder a team would look for either. But he mashes the baseball. A move to second base over the next year is not a good idea for Evan Gattis to make. Simply put, second base is not the place for a 6'4" 230 pound ex-catcher.
While there would be a major adjustment period for Gattis,
This adjustment period potentially being "his entire Major League career." When Dan Uggla is brought in as a defensive replacement, that's never good news. The funny part is the author wants to trade for Infante or Zobrist (he never tells us what will be done with Uggla, so I assume he will very covertly be murdered in order to be removed from the Braves payroll) and then put an ex-catcher at second base. Baseball is a video game apparently.
it could be beneficial for the Braves because he's hitting .438 with two home runs and 10 RBI during spring training.
So sending a player who is hitting the cover off of the ball down to AAA to learn a new position he has never played before would be beneficial to the Braves this year? How can that be beneficial to the Braves when Gattis wouldn't even be on the active roster? I have so many questions and no answers that can satisfy my curiosity as to where this bad idea came from.
If Gattis could learn how to play second base, that would solve two problems:
If Jason Heyward could be cloned it would solve many problems as well. If Dan Uggla could find the fountain of youth that would solve a few issues. If we could teach birds to carry the heavy weight of a human being and train them to fly to a specific destination then we could rid ourselves of air travel costs. If dogs could speak then we wouldn't have to wonder why they are randomly barking at a wall. There are so many "ifs" and so few answers.
It would provide him with the opportunity to be in the lineup
So would carrying him on the roster as a backup left fielder/catcher/pinch hitter this year. Sending Gattis down to the minors to learn a new position, how exactly does this provide Gattis a chance to be in the lineup? If Uggla is struggling this year then shouldn't the idea to be to replace Uggla this year, not a year from now? There are much easier ways to get a player's bat in the lineup than send him down to the minors for a year to learn a new position. In fact, sending Gattis down to the minors is a specific effort to take his bat out of the lineup for this year when he is tearing the cover off the ball.
and it would solve the Uggla problem all in one.
No, it wouldn't solve the Uggla problem because Uggla would still be on the roster and still cost $13 million per year. Now if you have an idea on how to trade Uggla, get value for him in a trade, get most of his contract off the books and also find a quality second basemen, then that's a great suggestion. Suggesting the Braves move a 230 pound catcher to second base is not a real suggestion and this is just embarrassing for you to even suggest.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
2 comments Begging to Be Punched in the Face, T.J. Simers Almost Finds a Dodgers Player Who Will Oblige
I have covered T.J. Simers history of bashing women's soccer, attacking his colleagues at the Los Angeles Times using the written word, and attempting to goad or baiting Dodgers players into physically assaulting him. The man is a Grade-A troll. Simers' work of goading Dodgers players into a physical altercation is never finished. Apparently he went into the Dodgers locker room recently and tried to "spread joy" because he was in a good mood. The Dodgers had lost 6 out of their last 10 games, so you can imagine how well this went over. They were not in a good mood because they were losing games. It turns out Simers almost got in a physical altercation with a player, which is the goal he was trying to achieve by the way, and then he wrote about it. While I find the behavior of the Dodgers player (Matt Treanor) not very impressive, I also find the behavior of Simers deplorable as well. He knows what he was trying to do. He was trying to bait the Dodgers players into saying or doing something stupid so he could write another scathing column about them. He succeeded.
If Simers had walked into the locker room and everyone was joyous he would write about how the team isn't taking their losses seriously enough. Instead he walked into a somber locker room and tried to "spread joy." Now please know, the very existence of Simers in any room is bound to destroy any joy that can be found in that room. Simers passive-aggressively needled each player he came across until he got the reaction he wanted. He's pretty much everything wrong with sports journalism. What is shocking to me is there idiots in the comments defending Simers. I'm not going to defend Treanor, but Simers was the one baiting everyone here to get a reaction, and he got the one he wanted. I am of the opinion if you poke a bear so many times it is your fault when the bear smacks the shit out of you and ends up mauling you to death. Matt Treanor stopped shot of mauling T.J. Simers to death.
It was the perfect start to a day, breakfast with the granddaughter twins, one of them even letting me sit next to her.
"Why does Granddaddy smells like mothballs and dust?"
Then it was off to Target to spoil them, one getting a Barbie and the other a talking baby. They chose the most expensive toys, so there's no doubt they're my daughter's children.
I'm guessing Simers finds his daughter to be a money-hungry and high maintenance. What a joy it must be to have Simers as your father. It's a wonder his daughter even allows him to spend time with his granddaughters.
Not to mention, a Barbie is not the most expensive toy. Maybe in 1967 it was.
There's no way the Dodgers were going to ruin this day.
So Simers decided to top the day off he would go into the Dodgers locker room and "spread joy," thereby ruining the Dodgers day. Even when he is in a good mood, Simers has to passively-aggressively celebrate misery.
It seemed like an impossible task, but the Yankees brought so much joy to those people.
But shouldn't that be the mission of every sports team, bringing joy to their fans?
Yes, that probably be the mission of every sports team. I'm 100% sure the Dodgers aren't intentionally trying to lose games. Walking around the locker room and pretending you know how to fix their losing ills by "spreading joy" isn't going to help...which of course is something Simers knew already.
It seems so basic, but the Dodgers have been failures. They are trying to do a better job making players available for autographs, but inside the clubhouse there's no joy.
Probably because they are not playing well as a team and they aren't very happy about this. Hey! I have a good idea, why doesn't T.J. (which must stand for "Total Jackass") go spread some cheer and remind the Dodgers they are losing games? I'm sure they have forgotten by now.
I thought I'd try to change things, going to the clubhouse with the intent of inspiring — only to be told to leave.
T.J. Simers is full of shit. He wasn't trying to spread joy, he went into the Dodgers locker room with a fake air of joy in order to annoy the Dodgers players and elicit a reaction because they know he is being fake. Simers is doing the equivalent of a victory dance in front of a team he just beat at a pick-up basketball game. He was essentially taunting the Dodgers players by asking why they weren't happy when he knew full well why they weren't happy.
What you will find is Simers takes cheap shots at the Dodgers throughout this column, even after having talked to a player or coach who said he had joy in his heart. This proves to me Simers real intent. If Simers was really trying to put the players in a good mood, he wouldn't criticize them to their face. If a blogger went into a locker room and pulled this act, there would be calls for that blogger's access to be revoked and I am sure 100 articles written about how uncivil the Interwebs can be and how "real" journalists know how to behave around professional athletes. Because it is T.J. Simers a "real" sportswriter, no one gives a shit. Who cares if he is taking a dump on journalistic integrity?
First person I see is pitching coach Rick Honeycutt, so I ask him if he has joy in his heart.
"Every day," he says, which is impressive, knowing Joe Blanton pitches every five days.
There we go. Simers is spreading cheer by being critical. He must play the worst Santa Claus ever around Christmas time.
"How about you, you don't look joyful."
"This is my game face," he says.
Here comes the punchline...
By the way, I say, "Who are you?"
There we go. Simers accosts this player for not being joyful and then has the rudeness and audacity to say, "Who are you?" He does this just to be dipshit asshole he has consistently shown he can be.
"Matt,'' he says, and so that's who Matt Guerrier is.
Guerrier pitched for the Dodgers in 2011, how the hell did Simers not know who he was? The answer is that he knew exactly who Guerrier was, but he wanted to get a reaction. Simers is a pest, a cockroach, someone who needs to get punched in the face for pulling these antics. What kind of writer can't recognize a player who has been on the Dodgers team for two years?
Luis Cruz is beaming, the joy just oozing from him as he shows me a picture of his 6-month-old son and his first haircut.
"I couldn't feel any better," Cruz gushes, and I'm not surprised later when Cruz gets two hits and loses a home run on a great catch.
If joy is supposed to help a person do his/her job much better, then why does this column suck so bad? Simers claims he was joyful when he wrote it.
I don't see Adrian Gonzalez, but already know there's no joy to his game, or it's well-hidden. I'm not surprised later when he takes a called third strike to end the game with the tying run on second.
Would you be joyful knowing that T.J. Simers has a pass into the Dodgers clubhouse and could wander in at any point? I wouldn't.
I talk to Hanley Ramirez, who says, "Hey, my man.''
"I'm just trying to get everyone going,'' I tell Ramirez, "Because nothing else is working.''
There we go. Simers gets the joy he wants from a player and immediately adds on an insult to how the Dodgers are playing. Because you know, if the Dodgers locker room was really joyful then Simers would criticize them for being in a good mood while the team lost. Simers knows team isn't in a good mood, so when he doesn't get the reaction he wants, he throws a quick jab at the Dodgers not playing well in order to stir the pot and eventually get the reaction he wants.
But the voice is telling the team's PR guy to "Get that clown out of here,'' so I know Matt Treanor is talking about me.
Come on now, I hate clowns too, but do they really deserve to be compared to T.J. Simers? That's a low and unnecessary blow to clowns.
"What's your problem?'' says Treanor, and I'm thinking, I'm not the one who hasn't had a hit since July 26.
Which explains why Matt Treanor is in a bad mood and doesn't want to deal with T.J. Simers "fake joy" bullshit.
"Are you trying to tell me you have no joy in your heart?'' I say to Treanor, never for a second thinking I would talk to a Treanor unless it was the athlete in the family.
How does Simers not get fired for things like this? This isn't how a professional is supposed to act. He isn't supposed to bait the players he covers in order to get one of them to commit an act of violence against him. This is where the Los Angeles Times is now and they give him permission to continue with these antics by continuing to pay him. It's not the quality of the journalism that matters, but how many pageviews Simers can create no matter what he has to do to create them. Newspapers are dying because sportswriters like T.J. Simers are too concerned with trolling the team he covers rather than taking the time to know what one of the 25 athletes he gets paid to cover looks like in person.
"Get out of here," says Treanor, a second later saying, "Is there anything else you want to talk about?" Hello, anyone home?
"Sure, but you don't seem in the talking mood,'' I say, and Treanor says, "I am now.''
So in summary, T.J. Simers goes into the Dodgers locker room, trolls players in the locker room about feeling "joyful," and then gets the reaction he wants, at which point he stops talking to the players because he's finally gotten the reaction he wants.
He deserved to be punched for his actions. He hides behind his access badge and uses the written word to eviscerate the Dodgers players in print. He's like Jay Mariotti, except rather than hiding from the people he insults in print, he trolls these people to their face and then badmouths them in print.
Then he gets in my face and we're belly to belly because mine is so big.
"What's wrong with this team?'' I ask.
"Are you playing tonight?'' I ask, curious if the Dodgers have opted to surrender.
He's not, and credit to his teammates for not cheering.
What kind of professional is it who confronts an athlete like this? Why can't he ask questions like a normal person rather than get Treanor's blood pressure up in the hopes of creating a story to write about? He's the worst kind of troll. The kind of troll that acts like he has positive intentions when he is merely baiting a person in order to get a reaction and then runs back to whatever forum he has (Simers' forum being the column the LA Times inexplicably still allows him to write) and trashes that person again.
He tells me to meet him outside. I have a pass to get back in but I worry he might not. He says, "In the dugout.''
I agree, but need to chat with Mark Ellis. Ellis says he has joy, while Treanor interrupts to call me names that can't be printed here.
This is what Simers wanted. He had two goals. He wanted to bait an athlete into a reaction which would give him a column to write and make the athlete look bad. He achieved half of his intended goal in my opinion.
To me, the only one who looks bad is T.J. Simers. Though their fans may not agree, the Dodgers do care about whether they win or lose. Simers knows Dodgers' fans have high expectations that the Dodgers aren't meeting, so he figured he would let some of that frustration boil over and it would create a column he could write. So T.J. Simers saunters into the Dodgers' locker room and starts this "spreading joy" bullshit, all the while knowing his fake joy will only serve to irritate the Dodgers. When his intended effect isn't working, he states,
"I'm just trying to get everyone going,'' I tell Ramirez, "Because nothing else is working.''
which irritated Matt Treanor. Treanor loses his temper and mission accomplished, a Dodgers player has gotten pissed off. I don't think is the sign of a professional sportswriter. If Treanor had lost his temper because Simers was asking tough questions for a real journalistic reason, then I could fault Treanor more. He is at a fault for taking Simers' bait, but Simers didn't act professional by going into the locker room of the team he was covering simply to rub in how poorly they were playing under the guise of "bringing joy" to the locker room.
In the dugout, Treanor swears a lot, puts a finger in my face and when a team official suggests he apologize, Treanor goes on an obscenity-filled rant.
He's probably just mad he doesn't have a hit since July 26, right? Marcus Thames understands how Treanor feels.
I just pull out my Blackberry
Of course T.J. Simers owns a Blackberry. Why wouldn't he?
As for the joyless Dodgers, they fall flat again.
Even after all that joy Simers tried to spread in the locker room the Dodgers still fell flat? There is definitely no hope for the Dodgers then.
This is just another brick in the wall for Simers. Another example of his act and a continuation of his unprofessional baiting of Marcus Thames last year. I can't help but wonder what his colleagues think of him. I realize Dodgers fans have a lot of frustration at how the team has performed, but a sportswriter going through the locker room trying to troll the Dodgers players into getting angry isn't the answer. Simers should be ashamed and so should the LA Times. Of course, neither are.
If Simers had walked into the locker room and everyone was joyous he would write about how the team isn't taking their losses seriously enough. Instead he walked into a somber locker room and tried to "spread joy." Now please know, the very existence of Simers in any room is bound to destroy any joy that can be found in that room. Simers passive-aggressively needled each player he came across until he got the reaction he wanted. He's pretty much everything wrong with sports journalism. What is shocking to me is there idiots in the comments defending Simers. I'm not going to defend Treanor, but Simers was the one baiting everyone here to get a reaction, and he got the one he wanted. I am of the opinion if you poke a bear so many times it is your fault when the bear smacks the shit out of you and ends up mauling you to death. Matt Treanor stopped shot of mauling T.J. Simers to death.
It was the perfect start to a day, breakfast with the granddaughter twins, one of them even letting me sit next to her.
"Why does Granddaddy smells like mothballs and dust?"
Then it was off to Target to spoil them, one getting a Barbie and the other a talking baby. They chose the most expensive toys, so there's no doubt they're my daughter's children.
I'm guessing Simers finds his daughter to be a money-hungry and high maintenance. What a joy it must be to have Simers as your father. It's a wonder his daughter even allows him to spend time with his granddaughters.
Not to mention, a Barbie is not the most expensive toy. Maybe in 1967 it was.
There's no way the Dodgers were going to ruin this day.
So Simers decided to top the day off he would go into the Dodgers locker room and "spread joy," thereby ruining the Dodgers day. Even when he is in a good mood, Simers has to passively-aggressively celebrate misery.
It seemed like an impossible task, but the Yankees brought so much joy to those people.
But shouldn't that be the mission of every sports team, bringing joy to their fans?
Yes, that probably be the mission of every sports team. I'm 100% sure the Dodgers aren't intentionally trying to lose games. Walking around the locker room and pretending you know how to fix their losing ills by "spreading joy" isn't going to help...which of course is something Simers knew already.
It seems so basic, but the Dodgers have been failures. They are trying to do a better job making players available for autographs, but inside the clubhouse there's no joy.
Probably because they are not playing well as a team and they aren't very happy about this. Hey! I have a good idea, why doesn't T.J. (which must stand for "Total Jackass") go spread some cheer and remind the Dodgers they are losing games? I'm sure they have forgotten by now.
I thought I'd try to change things, going to the clubhouse with the intent of inspiring — only to be told to leave.
T.J. Simers is full of shit. He wasn't trying to spread joy, he went into the Dodgers locker room with a fake air of joy in order to annoy the Dodgers players and elicit a reaction because they know he is being fake. Simers is doing the equivalent of a victory dance in front of a team he just beat at a pick-up basketball game. He was essentially taunting the Dodgers players by asking why they weren't happy when he knew full well why they weren't happy.
What you will find is Simers takes cheap shots at the Dodgers throughout this column, even after having talked to a player or coach who said he had joy in his heart. This proves to me Simers real intent. If Simers was really trying to put the players in a good mood, he wouldn't criticize them to their face. If a blogger went into a locker room and pulled this act, there would be calls for that blogger's access to be revoked and I am sure 100 articles written about how uncivil the Interwebs can be and how "real" journalists know how to behave around professional athletes. Because it is T.J. Simers a "real" sportswriter, no one gives a shit. Who cares if he is taking a dump on journalistic integrity?
First person I see is pitching coach Rick Honeycutt, so I ask him if he has joy in his heart.
"Every day," he says, which is impressive, knowing Joe Blanton pitches every five days.
There we go. Simers is spreading cheer by being critical. He must play the worst Santa Claus ever around Christmas time.
"How about you, you don't look joyful."
"This is my game face," he says.
Here comes the punchline...
By the way, I say, "Who are you?"
There we go. Simers accosts this player for not being joyful and then has the rudeness and audacity to say, "Who are you?" He does this just to be dipshit asshole he has consistently shown he can be.
"Matt,'' he says, and so that's who Matt Guerrier is.
Guerrier pitched for the Dodgers in 2011, how the hell did Simers not know who he was? The answer is that he knew exactly who Guerrier was, but he wanted to get a reaction. Simers is a pest, a cockroach, someone who needs to get punched in the face for pulling these antics. What kind of writer can't recognize a player who has been on the Dodgers team for two years?
Luis Cruz is beaming, the joy just oozing from him as he shows me a picture of his 6-month-old son and his first haircut.
"I couldn't feel any better," Cruz gushes, and I'm not surprised later when Cruz gets two hits and loses a home run on a great catch.
If joy is supposed to help a person do his/her job much better, then why does this column suck so bad? Simers claims he was joyful when he wrote it.
I don't see Adrian Gonzalez, but already know there's no joy to his game, or it's well-hidden. I'm not surprised later when he takes a called third strike to end the game with the tying run on second.
Would you be joyful knowing that T.J. Simers has a pass into the Dodgers clubhouse and could wander in at any point? I wouldn't.
I talk to Hanley Ramirez, who says, "Hey, my man.''
"I'm just trying to get everyone going,'' I tell Ramirez, "Because nothing else is working.''
There we go. Simers gets the joy he wants from a player and immediately adds on an insult to how the Dodgers are playing. Because you know, if the Dodgers locker room was really joyful then Simers would criticize them for being in a good mood while the team lost. Simers knows team isn't in a good mood, so when he doesn't get the reaction he wants, he throws a quick jab at the Dodgers not playing well in order to stir the pot and eventually get the reaction he wants.
But the voice is telling the team's PR guy to "Get that clown out of here,'' so I know Matt Treanor is talking about me.
Come on now, I hate clowns too, but do they really deserve to be compared to T.J. Simers? That's a low and unnecessary blow to clowns.
"What's your problem?'' says Treanor, and I'm thinking, I'm not the one who hasn't had a hit since July 26.
Which explains why Matt Treanor is in a bad mood and doesn't want to deal with T.J. Simers "fake joy" bullshit.
"Are you trying to tell me you have no joy in your heart?'' I say to Treanor, never for a second thinking I would talk to a Treanor unless it was the athlete in the family.
How does Simers not get fired for things like this? This isn't how a professional is supposed to act. He isn't supposed to bait the players he covers in order to get one of them to commit an act of violence against him. This is where the Los Angeles Times is now and they give him permission to continue with these antics by continuing to pay him. It's not the quality of the journalism that matters, but how many pageviews Simers can create no matter what he has to do to create them. Newspapers are dying because sportswriters like T.J. Simers are too concerned with trolling the team he covers rather than taking the time to know what one of the 25 athletes he gets paid to cover looks like in person.
"Get out of here," says Treanor, a second later saying, "Is there anything else you want to talk about?" Hello, anyone home?
"Sure, but you don't seem in the talking mood,'' I say, and Treanor says, "I am now.''
So in summary, T.J. Simers goes into the Dodgers locker room, trolls players in the locker room about feeling "joyful," and then gets the reaction he wants, at which point he stops talking to the players because he's finally gotten the reaction he wants.
He deserved to be punched for his actions. He hides behind his access badge and uses the written word to eviscerate the Dodgers players in print. He's like Jay Mariotti, except rather than hiding from the people he insults in print, he trolls these people to their face and then badmouths them in print.
Then he gets in my face and we're belly to belly because mine is so big.
"What's wrong with this team?'' I ask.
"Are you playing tonight?'' I ask, curious if the Dodgers have opted to surrender.
He's not, and credit to his teammates for not cheering.
What kind of professional is it who confronts an athlete like this? Why can't he ask questions like a normal person rather than get Treanor's blood pressure up in the hopes of creating a story to write about? He's the worst kind of troll. The kind of troll that acts like he has positive intentions when he is merely baiting a person in order to get a reaction and then runs back to whatever forum he has (Simers' forum being the column the LA Times inexplicably still allows him to write) and trashes that person again.
He tells me to meet him outside. I have a pass to get back in but I worry he might not. He says, "In the dugout.''
I agree, but need to chat with Mark Ellis. Ellis says he has joy, while Treanor interrupts to call me names that can't be printed here.
This is what Simers wanted. He had two goals. He wanted to bait an athlete into a reaction which would give him a column to write and make the athlete look bad. He achieved half of his intended goal in my opinion.
To me, the only one who looks bad is T.J. Simers. Though their fans may not agree, the Dodgers do care about whether they win or lose. Simers knows Dodgers' fans have high expectations that the Dodgers aren't meeting, so he figured he would let some of that frustration boil over and it would create a column he could write. So T.J. Simers saunters into the Dodgers' locker room and starts this "spreading joy" bullshit, all the while knowing his fake joy will only serve to irritate the Dodgers. When his intended effect isn't working, he states,
"I'm just trying to get everyone going,'' I tell Ramirez, "Because nothing else is working.''
which irritated Matt Treanor. Treanor loses his temper and mission accomplished, a Dodgers player has gotten pissed off. I don't think is the sign of a professional sportswriter. If Treanor had lost his temper because Simers was asking tough questions for a real journalistic reason, then I could fault Treanor more. He is at a fault for taking Simers' bait, but Simers didn't act professional by going into the locker room of the team he was covering simply to rub in how poorly they were playing under the guise of "bringing joy" to the locker room.
In the dugout, Treanor swears a lot, puts a finger in my face and when a team official suggests he apologize, Treanor goes on an obscenity-filled rant.
He's probably just mad he doesn't have a hit since July 26, right? Marcus Thames understands how Treanor feels.
I just pull out my Blackberry
Of course T.J. Simers owns a Blackberry. Why wouldn't he?
As for the joyless Dodgers, they fall flat again.
Even after all that joy Simers tried to spread in the locker room the Dodgers still fell flat? There is definitely no hope for the Dodgers then.
This is just another brick in the wall for Simers. Another example of his act and a continuation of his unprofessional baiting of Marcus Thames last year. I can't help but wonder what his colleagues think of him. I realize Dodgers fans have a lot of frustration at how the team has performed, but a sportswriter going through the locker room trying to troll the Dodgers players into getting angry isn't the answer. Simers should be ashamed and so should the LA Times. Of course, neither are.
Friday, March 30, 2012
5 comments No, College Football Postseason Is Not Better Than College Basketball's Postseason
Leave it to a Bleacher Report columnist to believe the NCAA college football postseason is better than the NCAA college basketball postseason. I would bet even the most diehard college football fan would agree the NCAA Tournament is more exciting than the BCS bowl. I don't believe this to be true at all. Leave it to a Bleacher Report writer to get together 50 reasons why college football's bowls (there is no real postseason) are better than college basketball's NCAA Tournament. I don't even see how there is a debate on this issue.
The reasons given by the author are incomprehensibly bad and also noted by me in bold italics.
Let's start the slideshow!
I love both college basketball and football to death, but something about the BCS and all of the bowl games gets me more excited.
I love both college basketball and football to death, but NOTHING about the BCS and all of the bowl games gets me more excited.
There. It's fixed.
but here are my 50 reasons as to why March Madness does not hold a candle to college football's postseason.
I warn you, they are terrible. Maybe college football is better than college basketball during the regular season, but the college football bowl system is the biggest letdown and disappointment among all sports in terms of how the postseason is run. We wait almost a month and a half for two teams to battle for the BCS Championship and along the way there are bowl games, only half of which are even somewhat interesting to me. No offense to the 10 bowl games that featured teams who won 6 games or less prior to making a bowl game (meaning these teams were just above .500 or below .500 like UCLA before the bowl game), but I prefer the competition of the NCAA Tournament where one team at or under .500 in the field is the exception.
Cash Money
You can't argue with someone who considers cash money received by the schools and networks to be a reason one postseason is better than the other.
From 2009 through 2011, an average of 28.3 million people watched the BCS Championship. During that same span, an average of only 20.4 million watched the NCAA Tournament's title game.
I never knew people are considered monetary amounts. I'm going to go purchase a hamburger and pay Burger King with 1.5 people and see how that works. What he means to talk about is ad revenue. In reality, the ad revenue of the NCAA Tournament is third behind the Final Four and the World Series at $170 million. Where did I get this information? From the exact same article this idiot just selectively chose his information from.
For one, there's a lot more money at stake in college football than there is in basketball. The Final Four pulled in nearly $170 in ad revenue last year, behind only the Super Bowl ($228 million) and World Series ($269 million).
So while more people watch the BCS championship game and the networks have larger contracts for the BCS games, the Final Four pulls in more money for advertisers.
Officials
Officiating in college basketball does suck. I'll give everyone that.
If you paid any attention to the tournament, many of these games are being decided in the final minute with a questionable call (or so it seems).
I love the way your over-generalized statement proves your point.
We don’t see that in football and we never see a fluke game reversed in football unless it is for the better and correct call (it is called review).
The reasons given by the author are incomprehensibly bad and also noted by me in bold italics.
Let's start the slideshow!
I love both college basketball and football to death, but something about the BCS and all of the bowl games gets me more excited.
I love both college basketball and football to death, but NOTHING about the BCS and all of the bowl games gets me more excited.
There. It's fixed.
but here are my 50 reasons as to why March Madness does not hold a candle to college football's postseason.
I warn you, they are terrible. Maybe college football is better than college basketball during the regular season, but the college football bowl system is the biggest letdown and disappointment among all sports in terms of how the postseason is run. We wait almost a month and a half for two teams to battle for the BCS Championship and along the way there are bowl games, only half of which are even somewhat interesting to me. No offense to the 10 bowl games that featured teams who won 6 games or less prior to making a bowl game (meaning these teams were just above .500 or below .500 like UCLA before the bowl game), but I prefer the competition of the NCAA Tournament where one team at or under .500 in the field is the exception.
Cash Money
You can't argue with someone who considers cash money received by the schools and networks to be a reason one postseason is better than the other.
From 2009 through 2011, an average of 28.3 million people watched the BCS Championship. During that same span, an average of only 20.4 million watched the NCAA Tournament's title game.
I never knew people are considered monetary amounts. I'm going to go purchase a hamburger and pay Burger King with 1.5 people and see how that works. What he means to talk about is ad revenue. In reality, the ad revenue of the NCAA Tournament is third behind the Final Four and the World Series at $170 million. Where did I get this information? From the exact same article this idiot just selectively chose his information from.
For one, there's a lot more money at stake in college football than there is in basketball. The Final Four pulled in nearly $170 in ad revenue last year, behind only the Super Bowl ($228 million) and World Series ($269 million).
So while more people watch the BCS championship game and the networks have larger contracts for the BCS games, the Final Four pulls in more money for advertisers.
Officials
Officiating in college basketball does suck. I'll give everyone that.
If you paid any attention to the tournament, many of these games are being decided in the final minute with a questionable call (or so it seems).
I love the way your over-generalized statement proves your point.
We don’t see that in football and we never see a fluke game reversed in football unless it is for the better and correct call (it is called review).
Some of it actually is where the officials do not make the right call, but that is never the issue in college football (especially in bowl games).
Really? The 2002 BCS Championship Game argues differently. Also, in college basketball the officials are required to make more judgment calls without the benefit of instant replay. There are fewer judgment calls to be made in college football (other than where to spot the ball) during a game. I wouldn't say bad calls are NEVER an issue though.
Timeouts
There is nothing more annoying than having longer and extended timeouts in the NCAA Tournament. It allows the underdog to stay in the game longer and gives them more hope to believe.
This has absolutely no meaning in the real world. This author really, really, really likes to generalize. What's wrong with the underdog having more hope to believe? How do timeouts give the underdog more hope again?
There is nothing wrong with that, but college football keeps it at a level playing field.
I fail to see how timeouts cause an uneven playing field.
Maybe there is not an edge given in terms of how long the timeouts are,
"Maybe everything I've just said is all bullshit."
The bottom line is a college basketball game is two hours long and a college football is three hours long. Regardless of timeouts, it takes longer to play a college football game and the halftime of a BCS game is at least 30 minutes long. So there may be more timeouts in college basketball, but BCS games take longer overall.
Final Four in Football is Always Better
The top two bowl games (national title being one of them, obviously) every season are always memorable, period. I wish I could say the same for college basketball.
ANOTHER generalization. There have been memorable college basketball and college football games. We all remember Vince Young's drive that won the game for Texas in the 2005 National Championship Game, but we also remember Gordon Heyward's halfcourt shot that almost won the NCAA Tournament for Butler.
I'm not sure what anyone finds memorable about the BCS Championship Games over the last five years, other than who won of course. Even the "best" game in that time wasn't the most exciting championship game (2011 BCS Championship Game) and is mostly known for Oregon's inability to properly ensure Michael Dyer was down, allowing him to rush for more yardage on a running play. I feel like the BCS Championship Game is usually a letdown after a month and a half long wait. That's just my opinion though and I don't have any over-generalized statements to support my opinion.
College Basketball's Regular Season
I cannot say I have too many friends or family members who even bother watching any of the regular season games.
Perhaps you shouldn't use your friends and family as the sample size from which you chose to derive your conclusion.
Well, they are essentially meaningless due to the fact that you are not rewarded much by dominating in the regular season.
So what exactly was LSU rewarded for dominating the regular season this year in college football? A chance to play Alabama, a team they had already beaten during the regular season? That's some reward, the chance to beat Alabama, a they had already beaten at Alabama. At least college basketball has a tournament which allows the best teams to go head-to-head, which is something college football probably needs.
Outside of earning a one-seed, you might be matched up with a giant killing mid-major or perhaps one hell of a squad in the second (now called third round).
That's the breaks and what makes the college basketball postseason so much fun. You have to constantly prove you are one of the best teams in the country to advance. What makes college football's postseason so tedious is fans have to sit through 20+ irrelevant bowl games just to get to a bowl game that "matters" in that they don't really matter since the winner only gets pride, a trophy and a gift bag for participating.
College football's Regular Season
We are already stretching these reasons to get to 50.
It leads us to a tremendous postseason where we see the best of the best compete against one another.
No we don't. We see teams chosen for a bowl game based on predicted attendance for that game, ability for the bowl to turn the highest amount of profit, and conference affiliation.
And this news might shock you, but they reward teams for what they accomplished in the regular season!
Ask Boise State and Oklahoma State if they feel they were rewarded for what they accomplished during the regular season. The odds aren't they don't feel very rewarded. Houston lost their conference championship game and was rewarded by playing by going to the TicketCity Bowl, without a chance to play against other teams who only have one loss.
College football takes the two "best" teams and pits them against each other and all the other teams are shit out of luck.
Pageantry
In the first few rounds, some teams just get a feel for their competition. In bowl games, this is it.
Wasn't it just a few minutes ago the author said the college basketball postseason stunk because a team isn't rewarded for a strong regular season? Didn't the author say a team could run into "a giant-killing mid-major" or "one hell of a squad?" But now, teams are just feeling their way through games? You can't have it both ways. Either elite college basketball teams are challenged by a "giant-killing mid-major" or they can feel their way through games. You can't argue both ways and be persuasive.
Jump Balls
There is one jump ball per game. So jump balls are bad?
It is like a turnover, if your team does not have the possession arrow, then it just flat out stinks.
So the possession arrow stinks AND jump balls stink?
I do not agree with Dick Vitale on everything, but this rule must change (he has stated it many times). They need to jump it up like the NBA because this kills the tournament.
WHAT? So jump balls are bad, but college basketball should have more jump balls? I hate to ask this question, but if jump balls are so damn bad, then WHY DO YOU WANT MORE OF THEM?
This article reads like it was dictated to the author by a 5 year old.
Tiring
Bowl season allows you time to actually get some sleep and be able to come back ready to go for every game.
Unfortunately for the first two weeks of the bowl games are you rested and ready to watch irrelevant bowl games and by the time good bowl games come around they start at 8:45pm It's hard to watch the whole thing if you live on the East Coast.
Entertainment
The momentum never dies in college football’s postseason, and we are almost never let down in the main events (BCS bowls).
The momentum never dies in college football's postseason because there is never any momentum. Once the bowl games matchups are decided it takes a month for some of the matchups to even take place. There is no momentum for BCS bowls. All momentum is destroyed by the long wait for the BCS bowl games and the fact the games are played at 8:30pm on a weeknight. While the NCAA Tournament is an event, the BCS bowls are a welcome sign that bowl season is finally ending.
Getting Jobbed
Outside of getting jobbed by officials in the final minutes (Butler-Pitt, among hundreds of games),
This is among hundreds of games, not wait, thousands of games, no wait, millions of games where one team has gotten "jobbed" by the officials. In fact, there are so many games where a team has gotten "jobbed" by the officials the author doesn't even bother to list them. In fact, there are so many numerous games the author doesn't even have time to list a game from this very college basketball season where the officials "jobbed" a team. So he lists a Butler-Pitt NCAA Tournament game where the officials didn't screw up, but called two legitimate fouls, one on each team. So neither team got "jobbed" since Butler and Pitt had a ticky-tack foul called on them at the end of the game. What a poor example to prove another over-generalized reason.
Basketball is about a game of runs, but one poor shooting night and it all evaporates in front of you.
Timeouts
There is nothing more annoying than having longer and extended timeouts in the NCAA Tournament. It allows the underdog to stay in the game longer and gives them more hope to believe.
This has absolutely no meaning in the real world. This author really, really, really likes to generalize. What's wrong with the underdog having more hope to believe? How do timeouts give the underdog more hope again?
There is nothing wrong with that, but college football keeps it at a level playing field.
I fail to see how timeouts cause an uneven playing field.
Maybe there is not an edge given in terms of how long the timeouts are,
"Maybe everything I've just said is all bullshit."
The bottom line is a college basketball game is two hours long and a college football is three hours long. Regardless of timeouts, it takes longer to play a college football game and the halftime of a BCS game is at least 30 minutes long. So there may be more timeouts in college basketball, but BCS games take longer overall.
Final Four in Football is Always Better
The top two bowl games (national title being one of them, obviously) every season are always memorable, period. I wish I could say the same for college basketball.
ANOTHER generalization. There have been memorable college basketball and college football games. We all remember Vince Young's drive that won the game for Texas in the 2005 National Championship Game, but we also remember Gordon Heyward's halfcourt shot that almost won the NCAA Tournament for Butler.
I'm not sure what anyone finds memorable about the BCS Championship Games over the last five years, other than who won of course. Even the "best" game in that time wasn't the most exciting championship game (2011 BCS Championship Game) and is mostly known for Oregon's inability to properly ensure Michael Dyer was down, allowing him to rush for more yardage on a running play. I feel like the BCS Championship Game is usually a letdown after a month and a half long wait. That's just my opinion though and I don't have any over-generalized statements to support my opinion.
College Basketball's Regular Season
I cannot say I have too many friends or family members who even bother watching any of the regular season games.
Perhaps you shouldn't use your friends and family as the sample size from which you chose to derive your conclusion.
Well, they are essentially meaningless due to the fact that you are not rewarded much by dominating in the regular season.
So what exactly was LSU rewarded for dominating the regular season this year in college football? A chance to play Alabama, a team they had already beaten during the regular season? That's some reward, the chance to beat Alabama, a they had already beaten at Alabama. At least college basketball has a tournament which allows the best teams to go head-to-head, which is something college football probably needs.
Outside of earning a one-seed, you might be matched up with a giant killing mid-major or perhaps one hell of a squad in the second (now called third round).
That's the breaks and what makes the college basketball postseason so much fun. You have to constantly prove you are one of the best teams in the country to advance. What makes college football's postseason so tedious is fans have to sit through 20+ irrelevant bowl games just to get to a bowl game that "matters" in that they don't really matter since the winner only gets pride, a trophy and a gift bag for participating.
College football's Regular Season
We are already stretching these reasons to get to 50.
It leads us to a tremendous postseason where we see the best of the best compete against one another.
No we don't. We see teams chosen for a bowl game based on predicted attendance for that game, ability for the bowl to turn the highest amount of profit, and conference affiliation.
And this news might shock you, but they reward teams for what they accomplished in the regular season!
Ask Boise State and Oklahoma State if they feel they were rewarded for what they accomplished during the regular season. The odds aren't they don't feel very rewarded. Houston lost their conference championship game and was rewarded by playing by going to the TicketCity Bowl, without a chance to play against other teams who only have one loss.
College football takes the two "best" teams and pits them against each other and all the other teams are shit out of luck.
Pageantry
In the first few rounds, some teams just get a feel for their competition. In bowl games, this is it.
Wasn't it just a few minutes ago the author said the college basketball postseason stunk because a team isn't rewarded for a strong regular season? Didn't the author say a team could run into "a giant-killing mid-major" or "one hell of a squad?" But now, teams are just feeling their way through games? You can't have it both ways. Either elite college basketball teams are challenged by a "giant-killing mid-major" or they can feel their way through games. You can't argue both ways and be persuasive.
Jump Balls
There is one jump ball per game. So jump balls are bad?
It is like a turnover, if your team does not have the possession arrow, then it just flat out stinks.
So the possession arrow stinks AND jump balls stink?
I do not agree with Dick Vitale on everything, but this rule must change (he has stated it many times). They need to jump it up like the NBA because this kills the tournament.
WHAT? So jump balls are bad, but college basketball should have more jump balls? I hate to ask this question, but if jump balls are so damn bad, then WHY DO YOU WANT MORE OF THEM?
This article reads like it was dictated to the author by a 5 year old.
Tiring
Bowl season allows you time to actually get some sleep and be able to come back ready to go for every game.
Unfortunately for the first two weeks of the bowl games are you rested and ready to watch irrelevant bowl games and by the time good bowl games come around they start at 8:45pm It's hard to watch the whole thing if you live on the East Coast.
Entertainment
The momentum never dies in college football’s postseason, and we are almost never let down in the main events (BCS bowls).
The momentum never dies in college football's postseason because there is never any momentum. Once the bowl games matchups are decided it takes a month for some of the matchups to even take place. There is no momentum for BCS bowls. All momentum is destroyed by the long wait for the BCS bowl games and the fact the games are played at 8:30pm on a weeknight. While the NCAA Tournament is an event, the BCS bowls are a welcome sign that bowl season is finally ending.
Getting Jobbed
Outside of getting jobbed by officials in the final minutes (Butler-Pitt, among hundreds of games),
This is among hundreds of games, not wait, thousands of games, no wait, millions of games where one team has gotten "jobbed" by the officials. In fact, there are so many games where a team has gotten "jobbed" by the officials the author doesn't even bother to list them. In fact, there are so many numerous games the author doesn't even have time to list a game from this very college basketball season where the officials "jobbed" a team. So he lists a Butler-Pitt NCAA Tournament game where the officials didn't screw up, but called two legitimate fouls, one on each team. So neither team got "jobbed" since Butler and Pitt had a ticky-tack foul called on them at the end of the game. What a poor example to prove another over-generalized reason.
Basketball is about a game of runs, but one poor shooting night and it all evaporates in front of you.
It is tough for a running team to get bottled up in a bowl game when they have two All-Americans paving the way.
So because the NCAA Tournament is more unpredictable, it isn't as exciting as the bowl games? Crazy me, I always thought excitement was good during sporting events.
Forget the major upsets in college football because the two juggernauts competing with one another are more than likely close in talent to begin with.
Who can forget the juggernaut West Virginia team playing the juggernaut Clemson team in a bowl game this year? The same game where West Virginia ran up 70 points on the juggernaut Clemson team. How about that National Championship game this year where the juggernaut LSU team couldn't get past mid-field?
No Jamar Samuels
Never in my lifetime have I ever heard of or even pondered such an awful thought. Jamar Samuel was Kansas State's second-leading scorer and leading rebounder who suspended approximately 20 minutes before tip-off this past weekend against Syracuse.
The timing was the abysmal part of this whole thing, and for that reason I must put the NCAA Tournament and college basketball in the timeout circle.
We all know college football would never have problems like this. Players would never get suspended for selling a game-worn jersey or selling memorabilia for tattoos. That stuff never happens in college football.
Sloppy Play
We hardly see sloppy play in the bowl games—and that is with a month off.
I thought Clemson did a great job of not tackling after being given a month off. They only gave up 70 points in a BCS bowl game. Who can forget LSU's precision offense that couldn't get a first down in the BCS Championship Game? It was memorable to watch Jordan Jefferson and the LSU offense make your local high school team look like the 2007 New England Patriots offense.
The preparation put in is remarkable to witness,
You are an idiot and you clearly don't watch the bowl games. Sometimes teams play like they don't even want to be there, which in many cases the teams don't. This is especially true if that team believes they deserved a better bowl bid which they didn't receive because a bowl choose a lesser-talented team which would bring the bowl more attendance and therefore more income. One more reason bowls suck. Bowls are about money and attendance, not putting the best matchups on the field.
The teams get a minimum of three days off (most teams get full week), but it is amazing to watch teams throw bricks up at the rim.
I want to be a sportswriter! I write for Bleacher Report! I write over-generalized statements! All teams throw up bricks in the NCAA Tournament! Fuck facts, I have my opinion! Every white player tries hard, most fat people are lazy and if you see a group of minorities together they are probably committing a crime! I write for Bleacher Report and refuse to write like a mentally competent human being would!
Outside of a few bowl games every season, every game is hard fought heading into the fourth quarter.
"Most" bowl games are fought hard? There is no proof of this given by the author, instead he just makes blanket and over-generalized statements in an effort to prove his point. This is embarrassing even for Bleacher Report and please remember Bleacher Report will sometimes print nearly anything that is written in English and the author is able to throw more than two sentences together to form a paragraph.
No Frustration
How many of your friends—and yourself included—just hate shredding that bracket up on the first day?
Forget the major upsets in college football because the two juggernauts competing with one another are more than likely close in talent to begin with.
Who can forget the juggernaut West Virginia team playing the juggernaut Clemson team in a bowl game this year? The same game where West Virginia ran up 70 points on the juggernaut Clemson team. How about that National Championship game this year where the juggernaut LSU team couldn't get past mid-field?
No Jamar Samuels
Never in my lifetime have I ever heard of or even pondered such an awful thought. Jamar Samuel was Kansas State's second-leading scorer and leading rebounder who suspended approximately 20 minutes before tip-off this past weekend against Syracuse.
The timing was the abysmal part of this whole thing, and for that reason I must put the NCAA Tournament and college basketball in the timeout circle.
We all know college football would never have problems like this. Players would never get suspended for selling a game-worn jersey or selling memorabilia for tattoos. That stuff never happens in college football.
Sloppy Play
We hardly see sloppy play in the bowl games—and that is with a month off.
I thought Clemson did a great job of not tackling after being given a month off. They only gave up 70 points in a BCS bowl game. Who can forget LSU's precision offense that couldn't get a first down in the BCS Championship Game? It was memorable to watch Jordan Jefferson and the LSU offense make your local high school team look like the 2007 New England Patriots offense.
The preparation put in is remarkable to witness,
You are an idiot and you clearly don't watch the bowl games. Sometimes teams play like they don't even want to be there, which in many cases the teams don't. This is especially true if that team believes they deserved a better bowl bid which they didn't receive because a bowl choose a lesser-talented team which would bring the bowl more attendance and therefore more income. One more reason bowls suck. Bowls are about money and attendance, not putting the best matchups on the field.
The teams get a minimum of three days off (most teams get full week), but it is amazing to watch teams throw bricks up at the rim.
I want to be a sportswriter! I write for Bleacher Report! I write over-generalized statements! All teams throw up bricks in the NCAA Tournament! Fuck facts, I have my opinion! Every white player tries hard, most fat people are lazy and if you see a group of minorities together they are probably committing a crime! I write for Bleacher Report and refuse to write like a mentally competent human being would!
Outside of a few bowl games every season, every game is hard fought heading into the fourth quarter.
"Most" bowl games are fought hard? There is no proof of this given by the author, instead he just makes blanket and over-generalized statements in an effort to prove his point. This is embarrassing even for Bleacher Report and please remember Bleacher Report will sometimes print nearly anything that is written in English and the author is able to throw more than two sentences together to form a paragraph.
No Frustration
How many of your friends—and yourself included—just hate shredding that bracket up on the first day?
Bowlmania does not do that to you, so that has to be a bit more enjoyable.
It isn't more enjoyable. Unpredictability is fun in sports.
No Need To Skip Work
However, the postseason in college football allows you to still be productive with your non-college football life.
This is simply an outright lie. Here are the bowl games that were played this year when people were at work (this doesn't include people who work on the weekend and remember the United States does have a West Coast, so games starting at 5pm take place when they are at work):
Gildan New Mexico
AdvoCare V100 Independence
Little Caesars Bowl
Military Bowl Presented By Northrop Grumman
Bridgepoint Education Holiday
Champs Sports
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces
New Era Pinstripe
Franklin American Mortgage Music City
TicketCity
Outback
Capital One
Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl
Rose
The NCAA Tournament can set you back if you get addicted by watching every single game (all 67 of them).
The Thursday and Friday of the first weekend of the tournament is the only time a person who gets off work at 5pm on either coast can't watch an entire game. Every other game is during the evening after 7pm or on a weekend. What a terrible point.
I'm going with one sentence pithy replies from here on out...
College Gameday
It feels like your team wins a dramatic game and then the next day the season is done with. That is the way it goes in college basketball, but that doesn’t mean it is cool or fair.
No, no, no, this is EXACTLY why bowl games suck, because after a bowl game the season is over the team that wins the bowl game never plays another team.
NIT is for the Weak
The NIT isn't considered the NCAA Tournament, but nice try.
Rivalries are Made
You could argue the NCAA Tournament gives us matchups we would never see in any other sport.
No Need To Skip Work
However, the postseason in college football allows you to still be productive with your non-college football life.
This is simply an outright lie. Here are the bowl games that were played this year when people were at work (this doesn't include people who work on the weekend and remember the United States does have a West Coast, so games starting at 5pm take place when they are at work):
Gildan New Mexico
AdvoCare V100 Independence
Little Caesars Bowl
Military Bowl Presented By Northrop Grumman
Bridgepoint Education Holiday
Champs Sports
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces
New Era Pinstripe
Franklin American Mortgage Music City
TicketCity
Outback
Capital One
Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl
Rose
The NCAA Tournament can set you back if you get addicted by watching every single game (all 67 of them).
The Thursday and Friday of the first weekend of the tournament is the only time a person who gets off work at 5pm on either coast can't watch an entire game. Every other game is during the evening after 7pm or on a weekend. What a terrible point.
I'm going with one sentence pithy replies from here on out...
College Gameday
It feels like your team wins a dramatic game and then the next day the season is done with. That is the way it goes in college basketball, but that doesn’t mean it is cool or fair.
No, no, no, this is EXACTLY why bowl games suck, because after a bowl game the season is over the team that wins the bowl game never plays another team.
NIT is for the Weak
The NIT isn't considered the NCAA Tournament, but nice try.
Rivalries are Made
You could argue the NCAA Tournament gives us matchups we would never see in any other sport.
The real point is seeing Goliath’s battle it out on the gridiron, which gets me more excited than seeing a Cinderella eventually break their slipper.
I've never heard the argument that because the NCAA Tournament is more competitive and features never-before-seen matchups, this makes it inferior to college football...a simply amazing line of thought.
Five Fouls
In a game that matters the most, we often see All-American players perform like scrubs.
"Often" see All-American players perform like scrubs, yet All-American Kemba Walker led UConn to the NCAA Championship last year, just like All-American Jon Scheyer did the year before, just like All-American Tyler Hansbrough did the year before that.
In a fluky one-game playoff, anything can occur.
Like anything could happen in the one-game playoff that is a bowl game?
Excitement
He's just looking in the dictionary and naming words he sees at this point. I would use the Will Ferrell "George W. Bush" voice to read what's written in bold if I were you. It makes it more exciting to read.
Many of the first-round games are extremely boring because we see these teams come out flat.
Completely untrue and we see the author's continuous use of "many," "most," "often," or "all" to compensate for a lack of research and a convincing argument.
Relaxation
I love the NCAA Tournament like nobody’s business, but the postseason for college football is more relaxing.
Exactly, the NCAA Tournament is more exciting and more unpredictable. It is better.
Lehigh
However, some argue that Lehigh never deserved that shot against Duke in the first place, right?
Wrong, I haven't heard anyone argue this point of view until I just read it in this slideshow.
The underdog hangs around and finds a way to pull off the shocking upset in a first-round game when a top notch shooting team cannot hit the backside of a barn. Many argue that is bad for the game, not good.
There is absolutely no way this is bad for college basketball.
Prove Yourself
A top-five team has to continue to win game after game despite doing so for the previous four months.
This is clearly less preferable to basing who plays in the BCS Championship game based on a poll.
I understand that is how the game works, but that is weak sauce
This is relevant modern terminology "the kids" use!
No Complaining
While you could throw the same at me for the BCS since there are haters (though I won’t complain), the NCAA Tournament often has way too much boring negativity.
(Bengoodfella is speechless) You realize the majority of people hate the entire bowl system, right? Like the entire format and everything about it?
Consistency
Strategery.
In the BCS we would never get a chance to see two mediocre teams plays for it all because college football is just better in terms of rewarding their best.
It's just tough for college football to figure out which teams are the "best."
Entertainment
He's now used "entertainment" twice as a reason.
The Best of the Best
Every season college football rewards you with the best two teams on the planet. In my eyes, no other sport in America can come close to giving you the same.
Then you need to go to an eye doctor if that's what your eyes tell you.
The Super Bowl has legit teams normally, but in a one-game playoff, anything can happen. That is not the case in college football.
The argument that unpredictability is bad, and this is why the NCAA Tournament is bad, just absolutely astounds me.
The Best
Not to be confused with "The Best of the Best" of course.
I want to watch the best at all times possible. I am the biggest underdog guy out there,
You are also confused and lack the ability to understand your own self since you just wrote this:
The Final Four isn't always must watch if VCU is playing Butler. George Mason and those Cinderella stories are amazing to follow, but it is really getting old right now.
Yeah, you are a big underdog guy, as long as the underdog isn't the underdog and instead is an elite team from a major conference.
One-Game Playoff
I do not honestly know what I would do if a random non-AQ team such as Nevada had an opportunity to play Ohio State with a chance to compete for the BCS title.
If they earned it by defeating other teams in a tournament, then what the hell is the problem?
That is what we see in college basketball, and when it happens, it really does stink to witness.
He's a big underdog guy you know.
Holidays
Maybe you get a spring vacation or break, but on New Year’s day college football is king.
There were zero games on New Year's Day this year...damn facts getting in the way of trying to prove a point!
No Wait
Really, "no wait" a reason for why the BCS is better than the NCAA Tournament coming from a guy who likes the system that waits over an entire month for two teams to play for the BCS title?
The weekends are great to watch the NCAA Tournament, but Monday-Wednesday is atrocious without anything going on.
You know, other than the four First Four games that take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Happy New Year!
Still, celebrating the New Year’s with the ones you love will always be better for me.
Five Fouls
In a game that matters the most, we often see All-American players perform like scrubs.
"Often" see All-American players perform like scrubs, yet All-American Kemba Walker led UConn to the NCAA Championship last year, just like All-American Jon Scheyer did the year before, just like All-American Tyler Hansbrough did the year before that.
In a fluky one-game playoff, anything can occur.
Like anything could happen in the one-game playoff that is a bowl game?
Excitement
He's just looking in the dictionary and naming words he sees at this point. I would use the Will Ferrell "George W. Bush" voice to read what's written in bold if I were you. It makes it more exciting to read.
Many of the first-round games are extremely boring because we see these teams come out flat.
Completely untrue and we see the author's continuous use of "many," "most," "often," or "all" to compensate for a lack of research and a convincing argument.
Relaxation
I love the NCAA Tournament like nobody’s business, but the postseason for college football is more relaxing.
Exactly, the NCAA Tournament is more exciting and more unpredictable. It is better.
Lehigh
However, some argue that Lehigh never deserved that shot against Duke in the first place, right?
Wrong, I haven't heard anyone argue this point of view until I just read it in this slideshow.
The underdog hangs around and finds a way to pull off the shocking upset in a first-round game when a top notch shooting team cannot hit the backside of a barn. Many argue that is bad for the game, not good.
There is absolutely no way this is bad for college basketball.
Prove Yourself
A top-five team has to continue to win game after game despite doing so for the previous four months.
This is clearly less preferable to basing who plays in the BCS Championship game based on a poll.
I understand that is how the game works, but that is weak sauce
This is relevant modern terminology "the kids" use!
No Complaining
While you could throw the same at me for the BCS since there are haters (though I won’t complain), the NCAA Tournament often has way too much boring negativity.
(Bengoodfella is speechless) You realize the majority of people hate the entire bowl system, right? Like the entire format and everything about it?
Consistency
Strategery.
In the BCS we would never get a chance to see two mediocre teams plays for it all because college football is just better in terms of rewarding their best.
It's just tough for college football to figure out which teams are the "best."
Entertainment
He's now used "entertainment" twice as a reason.
The Best of the Best
Every season college football rewards you with the best two teams on the planet. In my eyes, no other sport in America can come close to giving you the same.
Then you need to go to an eye doctor if that's what your eyes tell you.
The Super Bowl has legit teams normally, but in a one-game playoff, anything can happen. That is not the case in college football.
The argument that unpredictability is bad, and this is why the NCAA Tournament is bad, just absolutely astounds me.
The Best
Not to be confused with "The Best of the Best" of course.
I want to watch the best at all times possible. I am the biggest underdog guy out there,
You are also confused and lack the ability to understand your own self since you just wrote this:
The Final Four isn't always must watch if VCU is playing Butler. George Mason and those Cinderella stories are amazing to follow, but it is really getting old right now.
Yeah, you are a big underdog guy, as long as the underdog isn't the underdog and instead is an elite team from a major conference.
One-Game Playoff
I do not honestly know what I would do if a random non-AQ team such as Nevada had an opportunity to play Ohio State with a chance to compete for the BCS title.
If they earned it by defeating other teams in a tournament, then what the hell is the problem?
That is what we see in college basketball, and when it happens, it really does stink to witness.
He's a big underdog guy you know.
Holidays
Maybe you get a spring vacation or break, but on New Year’s day college football is king.
There were zero games on New Year's Day this year...damn facts getting in the way of trying to prove a point!
No Wait
Really, "no wait" a reason for why the BCS is better than the NCAA Tournament coming from a guy who likes the system that waits over an entire month for two teams to play for the BCS title?
The weekends are great to watch the NCAA Tournament, but Monday-Wednesday is atrocious without anything going on.
You know, other than the four First Four games that take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Happy New Year!
Still, celebrating the New Year’s with the ones you love will always be better for me.
Waking up on New Year's Day is probably more exciting than Christmas was as a child nowadays.
Wait, does this have to do with the NCAA Tournament???????????
The Best of the Bunch
Again, not to be confused with "The Best" or "The Best of the Best."
BCS Matchups
In college football we always see dream matchups every January.
As long as you aren't a fan of Boise State or any other team that doesn't get a chance to play in the BCS games because they weren't chosen high enough in the polls.
Every Single Game Matters Leading Into Postseason
Except for the Alabama-LSU game played in November of this year, which apparently didn't count since the game was played again for the BCS Championship.
Every weekend during the regular season of college football, there are thrilling games filled with more pageantry than any other sport.
Then it ends with a huge thud when the bowl pairings are announced because the momentum slows down and the college football postseason competes directly against the end of the NFL season.
If you truly are the best team on the planet, then losing a game should never happen.
Which explains why since 1998 we have only had eight teams win the BCS Championship Game as an undefeated team. So nearly half the time, the BCS Champion has lost a game...but this should never happen of course. So explain how an undefeated team can still not get a chance to play in the BCS Championship Game? The system works! Maybe if we keep saying it then it will eventually come true for every single season!
The best two teams have played each other nearly every single season. In college basketball, that rarely happens.
This is true unless you think Oklahoma State (or Stanford) deserved a shot at the BCS Championship Game.
There is no way the BCS bowls are better than the NCAA Tournament. No over-generalized and poorly executed slideshow can convince me differently.
The Best of the Bunch
Again, not to be confused with "The Best" or "The Best of the Best."
BCS Matchups
In college football we always see dream matchups every January.
As long as you aren't a fan of Boise State or any other team that doesn't get a chance to play in the BCS games because they weren't chosen high enough in the polls.
Every Single Game Matters Leading Into Postseason
Except for the Alabama-LSU game played in November of this year, which apparently didn't count since the game was played again for the BCS Championship.
Every weekend during the regular season of college football, there are thrilling games filled with more pageantry than any other sport.
Then it ends with a huge thud when the bowl pairings are announced because the momentum slows down and the college football postseason competes directly against the end of the NFL season.
If you truly are the best team on the planet, then losing a game should never happen.
Which explains why since 1998 we have only had eight teams win the BCS Championship Game as an undefeated team. So nearly half the time, the BCS Champion has lost a game...but this should never happen of course. So explain how an undefeated team can still not get a chance to play in the BCS Championship Game? The system works! Maybe if we keep saying it then it will eventually come true for every single season!
The best two teams have played each other nearly every single season. In college basketball, that rarely happens.
This is true unless you think Oklahoma State (or Stanford) deserved a shot at the BCS Championship Game.
There is no way the BCS bowls are better than the NCAA Tournament. No over-generalized and poorly executed slideshow can convince me differently.
Monday, January 23, 2012
9 comments Attack of the SimmonsClones!
When waiting that interminable long wait for Bill Simmons to post his Friday evening NFL picks, I realized I had not covered anything Bill Simmons has written lately. It isn't completely my fault to be honest with you. I don't read what Bill Simmons writes anymore on a weekly basis. He writes once a week and I'm usually not interested in what he writes about and I have no interest in hearing his podcasts, though I hear they aren't half-bad. Anyway, when I saw it was a Bill Simmons "real" mailbag full of SimmonsClones trying to appease their leader by completely copying the way he writes and just generally idolizing him, the Simmonsologist in me knew I had to not only mock Bill but those uber-Simmons fans who write into him in a desperate attempt to be exactly like Bill. Look, you can enjoy Bill Simmons' writing and not be a SimmonsClone. I call those who try to write exactly like Bill and seem to live for his acceptance "SimmonsClones." If their leader acknowledges and justifies their existence in this world by answering one of their questions in which they attempt to sound like Bill Simmons, well there is nothing else to live for at that point.
If I finish 11-0 against the spread in this year's playoffs, these Friday mailbags will keep going for the rest of my life, and yours, and your kids' lives, and your grandkids' lives, and for the rest of eternity, so help me Tebow.
I do like how Bill refers to "Tebow" in place of "God." It seems obvious, but I think it works fairly well. Bill can be a good writer at times. Also, I knew Bill would not finish 11-0 in the playoffs. His regular season picking record was 120-127-9, so if Bill finished 11-0 in the playoffs it would be like a #10 seed winning the NCAA Tournament.
As always, these are actual e-mails from readers.
Except for the emails Bill has made up of course. It's debatable to me at times whether these readers are just that pathetic to idolize Bill like they do, or it just turns out Bill makes some of these letters up.
Q: Congrats on going 4-0!!! Nobody believed in you!!!!!!
Q: The opening kickoff for Pittsburgh-Denver hitting the CROSSbar and coming to rest exactly on the 20 yard line sure seemed like an Omen, right?
Yes, it was an omen. The best part about Tebow's ascendance (see what I did there?) in the NFL conversation is the use of religious jokes and imagery in writing. I feel like its opened up a whole new avenue of jokes and imagery to use in sports.
A Tebow title coupled with a Clippers championship and you going 11-0 in the NFL playoffs … yeah, those things would make me quit my job and live off my 401k for the next six months until the world ends.
— Mike Desko, Chicago
SG: You don't have to worry about a Clippers championship, Mike — that's not happening on Vinny Del Negro's watch.
"Hi, I'm Bill Simmons and there isn't a single other executive or head coach that is as smart as I am. Everyone should hire me as their General Manager or head coach because I have the ability to make up fake trades and then ask 'who would say no' to the trade. Clearly this talent will translate perfectly to the real world. Someone please hire me."
You'd have a better chance of seeing Chris Paul and Blake Griffin French-kiss after an alley-oop.
I wouldn't put anything past Chris Paul. We all know how much he loves punching men's testicles. Maybe he likes that "athletic bi-racial Ginger" thing Blake Griffin has going for him. It's as if Derek Jeter, Michael Jordan and Carrot Top mated.
(Of course, if they fire Del Negro within the next few weeks and rent Phil Jackson for a four-month, $10 million playoff run … )
And the Clippers would only have to spend $10 million to do this? Where can they sign? Paying out the ass for a head coach is Bill's idea of an innovative way to improve the Clippers. There has to be some middle ground between keeping Del Negro as the head coach and renting Phil Jackson for a playoff run. I'm also not sure Phil Jackson can do much about the roster deficiencies that could plague the Clippers in the playoffs. I can't imagine why no one has hired Bill Simmons as a General Manager yet.
Q: A thousand years from now, will people build scenes of the 2010 NFL-Draft in front of their houses just like they do with the nativity play now? In the Pittsburgh game, they played in the stadium that's closest to heaven (Mile High). Tebow threw for 316 yards. Rothlisberger's interception came on 3rd and 16. Pittsburgh's time of possession was 31 minutes and 6 seconds.
SG: You just described why I have never been more frightened for a Patriots game. It's the first-ever Boston sporting event with zero upside. Name one result that would make Patriots fans feel fantastic afterwards.
How about the Patriots jumping all over the Broncos from the beginning and Tom Brady destroying the Broncos defense for nearly 30 points in the first half? Sure, I cheated and wrote this after the game, but I think Bill wants his readers to feel bad for what sees as the Patriots "no win" situation. He should probably just be happy his favorite team is in the playoffs, but whining about his teams' fate comes so naturally to Bill I'm not sure he can stop.
Even if Super Bowl XLII will always be the worst defeat in the history of the franchise, this particular loss would be more excruciating because we can see it coming …
YES! I love Bill's use of italics for emphasis at the end of a sentence. I would say for many franchises the loss in a Super Bowl is the worst defeat in the history of a franchise. Of course, most other franchises haven't won three Super Bowls over the last decade or so. This is why Bill gives Boston-area fans a bad name because of his inability to be self-aware. The Cleveland Browns haven't won anything significant in decades, yet Bill wants us to know how painful a loss in the playoffs would be for him.
How painful would a loss to the Broncos have been for the Patriots? It would even be worse than that one Super Bowl the Patriots somehow managed to lose. I realize the Pats had lost two straight playoff games and they expect more. Don't even get me started with Bill talking about how he can see the Patriots lose coming, while he also acknowledges what a huge upset it would have been if the Broncos beat the Patriots. No Pats fans wanted lose to the Broncos, but I feel like there should be a little perspective here. Bill is basically complaining his wallet can't fit all the one-hundred dollar bills he has and his diamond shoes are too tight.
If I were a Patriots fan, I would petition that Bill stop writing about New England area sports. I'm not saying Bill doesn't have a right to mourn a tough loss, but the way Bill writes is he seems to attempt to garner sympathy from his readers, many of whom would love their team to have a chance to lose a big game in the playoffs.
Here are four actual e-mails I received from gainfully employed, successful, rational people who root for the Patriots.
I don't want to spoil anything, but they all back Bill's point of view this would be the worst loss in the history of the Patriots team...or at least until next time the Patriots play a big game, in which case Bill sees that potential loss as the biggest loss in the history of the Patriots team. It's so tough being successful. I bet Bill thinks Jaguars fans have it good. At least they don't have to deal with the pain of losing big games.
E-mail no. 3 (a response to E-mail no. 2): "I have spent more time considering where to watch this game than what to feed my child this week
How about you feed your child a dose of perspective this week? Like maybe don't going around acting like someone you love or know has cancer or has died suddenly if the Patriots lose. How about feeding your child the reality that potentially losing a playoff game isn't the end of the world and quit acting like a playoff loss would literally be the end of your life as you know it? The Red Sox are going to be good this year, the Celtics---well they still have Rondo, and you can always jump on the Bruins bandwagon if all else fails.
Home seems like a bad call — I really might break something and it might lead to divorce. I'm a mess about this game too. I really have nothing soothing to say."
Home is a bad call, because breaking something out in public or at a friend's house is so much better than breaking something at home? Your wife won't divorce you if she finds out you destroyed a bar room stool in a hissy fit over your favorite NFL team not winning a game?
Who do you think wrote this next email "to" Bill? See if you can take a guess. Let's look at some characteristics of this email to figure it out.
E-mail no. 4: "My cousin Kristin's wedding reception is at the exact same time as this game. No TV's at the reception — my Dad already checked.
Talking about his father's obsession with his favorite sports team. Actually, talking about his father at all.
We are going to have 40 people grimly huddled around my iPhone watching what promises to be one of the biggest upsets in sports history as we're watching some stolen internet stream that cuts off right as Tebow's potential game-winning pass is soaring in the air, followed by me giving my father CPR for the next 20 minutes.
Another mention of his father reacting negatively to a Boston-related sports event. Extreme pessimism while also predicting the loss would be one of "the biggest upsets in sports history."
(Really? Would the Broncos having beaten the Patriots be one of the biggest upsets in sports history? The Broncos beating the Patriots probably would not have been one of the biggest upsets in sports history. The line on the game was 13.5 points, which is a lot and I am not denying it would be an upset, but one of the biggest upsets in sports as a whole? I think this is using hyperbole in order to prove a point. That point? Feel sorry for the writer of this email because his team is so good, it would stink to lose to a team that isn't very good.)
I have never felt more pessimistic about a sporting event in which my team would have to be beaten by a 7-to-1 underdog to lose — not ever."
Exaggerating what a potential loss would feel like and using hyperbole to describe how he feels before the game, while yet again acknowledging all of his sad feelings are unlikely since it would be a huge upset.
Guess who wrote it...
(By the way, that last e-mail was written by me. And it's all true. Cousin Kristin — you're lucky I like you.)
Bill Simmons wrote it to himself. Bill wrote this email much like the other "emails" in his mailbag that he presumably writes to himself but doesn't cop to it.
Q: The Saints/Lions game is happening as I'm writing this — in fact the Lions are up 14-7 with just under four minutes to play. Game over, Saints win. Why? The camera just showed Stafford with his hat on backwards. Brim-to-the-Back Guy cannot win a Super Bowl, and I don't think there's any way Brim-to-the-Back Guy out-duels Drew Brees in the Superdome.
Here is one Brim-to-the-Back Guy. I'm pretty sure he has won two Super Bowls.
Here is another Brim-to-the-Back Guy. He has won two Super Bowls.
Another Brim-to-the-Back Guy. He has one Super Bowl victory.
My point is perhaps Michael Keeney from Wisconsin should stop trying to be creative and funny in order to impress Bill. The quarterback for the Packers had his hat backwards at media day last year before the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl the Packers won. Fail. Stafford wears his hat backwards a lot, but this is a weak theory since quite a few Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks have worn their hat backwards at some point or another.
Has any Brim-to-the-Back Guy won the big game?
Tom Brady and the other two quarterbacks I linked. I can do what you didn't do and do more research on this non-pertinent issue. You have been in a Bill Simmons mailbag, so I am sure you now consider your life complete and don't care what I have to say.
Some'll claim Big Ben, you can't exactly say he was the leader of those Super Bowl teams.
Yeah, you can. The first Super Bowl the Steelers won despite Roethlisberger's performance, but he definitely led the Steelers to their second Super Bowl. A Brim-to-the-Back Guy won that Super Bowl.
You've got your finger on the pulse; you've the mighty combined forces of Grantland and ESPN's crack research teams.
The only thing Bill has his finger on the pulse of is whatever causes idiots like this to write in to Bill's mailbag and try to be exactly like Bill. To answer this question, you simply need a rudimentary knowledge of how to do an internet search.
SG: This was such a brilliant observation that, for about nine seconds, I thought about stealing the point entirely and pretending I never heard of Michael Keeney of Madison, Wisconsin.
Bill probably isn't kidding. We have reached the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to what is considered "a brilliant observation" if this observation, which also happens to be factually incorrect, is considered brilliant. Bill's mailbags are pretty much a masturbatory venture for him and his readers. The readers are thrilled to be in Bill's mailbag and it excites Bill to see idiots write in to his mailbag, come up with inane theories, and desperately attempt to write like Bill does. The readers get pleasure from seeing Bill print their emails and Bill gets pleasure from seeing how popular he is.
The only elite QB with less of a chance in a big game than Brim-to-the-Back Guy is Brim-to-the-Side Guy. In fact, the secret of Tom Brady's maturation into a franchise QB wasn't dropping to the sixth round; it was when he decided to stop being Brim-to-the-Back Guy.
Well, except for the fact he won a Super Bowl as a Brim-to-the-Back Guy. I'm guessing in order to keep this brilliant observation going, we can just ignore the theory not only is stupid, but also is factually incorrect.
Q: Did Marvin Lewis pull out the best Brad Childress performance of the season in Round One? It was just AWESOME!! I think he took pity on Bill Barnwell and decided to give him material until the end of the season.
— Pierre, Paris, France
Get ready for a Bill Simmons recycled joke. He changes the name, slightly changes the format, and then you have a ready-made recycled joke. Bill has done this quite a few times in his columns, but it started with the Atrocious GM Summit. I recall Bill writing about how a group of bad coaches/GMs should get together on a game show and compete against each other to prove their awfulness quite a few times. The joke worked better as the Atrocious GM Summit when it was introduced about 6 years ago, but because Bill has given up on thinking of actual creative ideas, he rips off his own idea and creates...wait for it...a Bad Head Coach game show. Creative, no? Actually I mean...creative? No.
SG: You know how ESPN tried to turn 2011 into The Year of the Quarterback? I wish we tried to turn 2012 into The Year of the Coach, if only so we could have created a 16-coach game show formatted somewhat like Chopped, with the contestants making impromptu coaching decisions instead of impromptu cooking challenges. Imagine Andy Reid, Marvin Lewis, Brad Childress and Norv Turner battling in the season finale of Botched.
Andy the Host: "Gentlemen, it's the second quarter of a playoff game, you're playing on the road and trailing by three, you're at midfield, the two-minute warning is coming up,
I'll save you the pain. It goes on like that. The idea was great the first time, the second time it wasn't so creative, and now once a few details have been switched around it is simply the same joke told a different way that has the same punchline of "these guys are clueless."
Basically, Bill is trying to pass this idea off as original, when it is just a variation on another one of his ideas. He tries to fool his readers into thinking it isn't recycled. When I used to do JoeChats (R.I.P.) I would sometimes do a "I wonder how this would work in real life..." scenario with one of Joe's responses. It was a continuing theme and I didn't change details around to pretend it wasn't a continuing theme. It's a continuation of a running idea. Bill changes the packaging around in an effort to think a Bad Head Coach show is different from his Atrocious GM Summit or any of the other ideas Bill has had for a coach/player/team/GM to make bad decisions in the company of each other in a competitive format.
Q: I understand why football coaches cover their mouth with their hand, clipboard, play chart, etc. during the game, but wouldn't it just make more sense for the headset manufacturers make the mouth pieces larger so that the full mouth is covered? Wait, did I just give away an amazing business idea??
— Doug, Oakland
SimmonsClones just want so desperately to be seen as creative in Bill's eyes. Do you know how stupid it would look to have a headset mouthpiece cover up the entire mouth? Not to mention when the coach wants to talk to someone who isn't on the headset he would have to push a rather large microphone to the side of the headset. The microphone would probably not go all the way to the side of the headset because the coach's face would be in the way of the huge microphone moving too far up and down.
Q: Has there ever been a more physically gifted WR than Calvin Johnson? Is it even close? He's clearly on the Bo Jackson All Stars (athletes we'll never see clones of.) I'm sure you have time to fill out the rest of that roster, which is way tougher than the NBA version, the Allen Iverson All Stars.
— Brock E., Denver
Another variation of the same theme. An All-Star team being named where each individual on the "team" have the same characteristic. I think Bill Simmons is very talented and when he gives a crap there aren't too many better writers. When he doesn't give a crap, we get another All-Star team named in a mailbag and then later posted to his Wikipedia page.
My list is short and sweet: Bo, Deion, Calvin Johnson, Randy Moss, Michael Vick, Steve Young, Lawrence Taylor, Walter Payton, Randall Cunningham … and we're done, unless you want to include Jerry Rice (for being a freak just for being so technically perfect/precise) or Rob Gronkowski (who probably would have made the list if not for Jimmy Graham, who's equally superfreakish, which somehow nullifies the superfreakishness of both guys because part of being a freak is having no frequal).
So two players at the same position can't be on the team because their "superfreakishness" cancel each other out. Yet, Calvin Johnson and Randy Moss are both on the team, as are Randall Cunningham and Steve Young. Bill makes the rules, then somewhat contradicts his own rules. Not to mention, the idea a person who is a freak has no equal is faulty. A freak is a person who is unusual or irregular. There can be more than two irregular tight ends in the NFL at the same time.
Q: I just read your newest mailbag. I was disappointed because I spent most of it reading the bold text. You are an excellent and intelligent writer. Your readers, typically, are not. I would like to hear more from you and less from them. Please consider my concerns.
Q: An idea for the 18-game schedule: each team plays 18 games, but (except for kickers and punters), no player can play in more than 16 games during the regular season. And this should be strongly enforced — if a player plays in even one play in a game, that counts as one of the 16. Imagine the endless debates over what games you decide to rest your best players — do you rest your starting QB against the weakest team you play, or maybe the best if you figure you're not beating that team anyway? Do you rest all your best players in two games, or mix and match? NFL Countdown would have to expand to 5 hours!!
— Mark Wooster, L.A.
I kicked around this idea a bit a year ago when the owners seemed to want to go to an 18 game schedule. It's scary for me I have the same idea as a SimmonsClone. Of course, eventually Bill will claim this idea for his own like he did with the Ewing Theory.
In fact, here's a vague, loosely-held together theory for you. Bill Simmons is like the band U2. Here the parallels I draw:
Early career
Bill Simmons wrote differently from the perspective of his audience. He was one of them and wrote like you and your friends talked and talked about the same things you and your friends talked about. He was good enough to write mainstream, but didn't write like mainstream writers. There was something different about him.
U2 was a different band. Political, but still rock and with enough mainstream sound to be mainstream, but was different from mainstream bands. They were like a college band that made it big.
Reaction to success
Bill Simmons reacted to success by writing a lot of the same things he had written before. He expanded on his previous theories and attempted to start new theories. Then he attempted to expand on his success in different avenues by writing for the Jimmy Kimmel Show and doing a Sports Guy cartoon. The audience didn't like that as much.
U2 reacted to success well (Achtung Baby) and expanded on their previous sound on that album. U2 then tried to expand on the sound more to take the group's sound in a different direction, but still be U2 (Zooropa). This wasn't popular with the audience.
Response to initial failure
Bill Simmons responded to the (somewhat) failure of writing for a talk show by diving back into his columns, writing a book, and expanded his brand at ESPN by executive producing "30 for 30." He achieved success doing this. Bill Simmons had found what worked for him and he wanted to search out change, but within the cocoon of knowing he still worked for ESPN.com.
U2 reacted to the failure of Zooropa and Pop, by writing an incredibly U2-sounding album "All That You Can't Leave Behind." They achieved success by going back to their original sound. They had re-found success and wanted to search out slight changes in sound, but within the cocoon of still sounding like U2.
Later Career
Bill Simmons started Grantland.com, which is a site where he writes once a week, mostly writing non-challenging columns which doesn't really show growth in Simmons' writing ability nor does it really present anything new to the audience. It is popular, so Simmons is more comfortable being popular and re-creating his previous ideas than challenging himself to get better. He has seen mainstream success and failure and knows what it takes for each. His writing doesn't need to improve because people will read his columns and his Grantland.com venture is backed by ESPN (and other great writers), so the odds of failure probably aren't great.
U2 followed up "All That You Can't Leave Behind" with essentially two sequel albums that sound very U2-ish. It doesn't change the U2 sound around. The band knows what sells albums and what audiences want to hear. They don't want to see them expand on their sound, they want U2 to re-create previously successful ideas. They know what mainstream success requires and what could have the potential to fail. The band's writing doesn't need to improve because people will buy their albums and the band has enough name recognition and forums to get their music out a new album with the "U2-sound" won't fail at this point.
I have always thought of U2 as the same band as R.E.M. if R.E.M. re-wrote "Out of Time" every four years, which they didn't. This made R.E.M. less popular, but I think it gave them more credibility as artists. There's nothing wrong with either Bill Simmons or U2 doing this, but I would like to see both of them grow a little more in their art.
SG: A possible wrinkle: If every team plays 18 games, that's 72 quarters in all … so why not tweak it so every player (except kickers and punters) can only play 62 quarters total?
Because that overcomplicates the issue. Bill's need to always improve on someone's idea, because he can't he isn't the smartest guy in the room, backfires here.
Did I mention that, as I type this email, I'm down on knees literally praying that my Tampa Bay Buccaneers hire 68 year old Marty "One and Done" Schottenheimer instead of Wade Phillips, Brad Childress or Mike Sherman? Not that those two thoughts are related or anything.
— Brandon, Vancouver
SG: Here's why I think the Bucs should hire Marty — you know how old people reach that stage when they just don't give a crap anymore and it's awesome?
(Cue overly long explanation that could be summed up easily in two sentences, but won't be due to Bill believing he comes off as more creative by comparing one thing to another in order to explain what he means rather than just saying what the hell he means)
That reminds me, here's a good rule of thumb for trades and coaching hirings: Float the guy's name out as a possibility, then check out the reaction from fans of his old team (bloggers, message boards, sports radio, etc.).
Remember, this guy actually believes he can be an NBA General Manager. We all know the most intelligent, non-reactionary group of people in the world are bloggers, people on message boards and callers to sports radio. Checking the reaction of these fans from his old team in no way could fail, could it? What could go wrong?
If the consensus can be described as "incredulously, deliriously and overwhelmingly sarcastic," you shouldn't trade for that player or hire that coach. It's that simple.
Yep, it's that simple. Bill Simmons for Bucks GM!
As a quick aside, I want everyone to remember in his January 6 mailbag Bill Simmons said the 49ers would not make the Super Bowl because their quarterback is Alex Smith. Bill then predicted the 49ers would beat the Saints.
Then Ragnar from Honolulu, who I won't rip because he lives in Hawaii and I want to live in Hawaii, criticizes Jim Nantz's call of the Steelers-Broncos game.
SG: I mean, Nantz had 10 minutes between the end of regulation and the first play from scrimmage in OT to come up with a clearly-written-ahead-of-time line just in case Tebow threw a game-winning pass in overtime!
Let's look at these lines Nantz should have come up with if Tebow threw the game-winning pass:
"Eighty yards, no flags, one miracle!"
I can somewhat see this one. Nantz would have to predict the play was a miracle, which any touchdown by the Broncos in overtime would be called a miracle regardless of whether it was or not. Nantz would have just inserted the amount of yards on the touchdown pass into his call. Still, for this specific call Nantz would have had to predict Tebow would throw an 80 yard touchdown pass.
"This is the dawning of the age of Demaryius!"
So before Demaryius Thomas caught the game winning touchdown pass, Jim Nantz should have predicted it was Demaryius Thomas who would catch the game winning touchdown pass? Nantz was expected to predict the Broncos would not only throw a game-winning touchdown pass, but that Demaryius Thomas would be the one to catch that pass, and then think of a catchy phrase to reflect this? This is what Nantz should have been doing in between the fourth quarter ending and overtime beginning? It just seems like this is a lot of predictions to make. Does Bill expect Nantz to do this with every Broncos player prior to overtime?
"Sudden death, sudden life, Tebow rises again!"
The Broncos never trailed in the game. This phrase therefore doesn't make sense.
"Look out, New England — the white Bronco is still on the loose!"
Creative, but a white Bronco isn't really relevant to New England and this seems like it would be roundly mocked. Of course, who am I to argue with Bill Simmons?
Q: Imagine if a Tim Tebow sex tape came out. It would have to be the biggest sex scandal fallout since Bill Clinton right? I asked several of my friends if they would rather see that or their football team win the Super Bowl and we all went with the sex tape.
— Ben Kendrick, West Hartford
The idiocy of Bill's readers sometimes shocks me. This guy's friends would rather see a Tim Tebow sex tape rather than their favorite team win the Super Bowl? I think he's making this up.
Q: I've been sucked into the Tebow magic but the porn industry seems to be dragging its feet. My buddy Marc and I were trying to come up with a proper name for the inevitable XXX Tebow movie and the best I could come up with was Bible Banger. Marc had the better one: A Third That's Long.
Yeah Bill, Mike from Chicago's idea was better.
Trying to remain objective while breaking down what would unquestionably be the most horrifying loss in Patriots history — not the worst, not the most bitter, but the most horrifying — was tougher than I thought. But here's the key point: You can't call the Broncos a "Nobody Believes in Us" team anymore.
And yet, earlier in this column Bill said the Patriots losing the Broncos would have been one of the biggest upsets in sports history. I'm confused. So the Broncos can't say "Nobody Believes in Us" anymore, but if they had beaten the Patriots it would have been one of the greatest upsets in sports history?
On Football Outsiders, Aaron Schatz wrote that — if Denver beat New England — it would be the third biggest upset of the last 20 years by F.O.'s DVOA ratings, trailing only Super Bowl XLII (arrrrgh) and Colts-Chiefs in 1995 (a gloriously macabre combination of bad luck, turnovers and Marty being Marty).
Bill leaves out an important point. Aaron Schatz wrote it would be the third biggest NFL PLAYOFF upset in the last 20 years if the Broncos had won. I still somewhat question if the Patriots losing to the Broncos would have been one of the greatest upsets in sports history. Maybe it would be one of the greatest upsets, of course it didn't happen so it doesn't really matter.
If I finish 11-0 against the spread in this year's playoffs, these Friday mailbags will keep going for the rest of my life, and yours, and your kids' lives, and your grandkids' lives, and for the rest of eternity, so help me Tebow.
I do like how Bill refers to "Tebow" in place of "God." It seems obvious, but I think it works fairly well. Bill can be a good writer at times. Also, I knew Bill would not finish 11-0 in the playoffs. His regular season picking record was 120-127-9, so if Bill finished 11-0 in the playoffs it would be like a #10 seed winning the NCAA Tournament.
As always, these are actual e-mails from readers.
Except for the emails Bill has made up of course. It's debatable to me at times whether these readers are just that pathetic to idolize Bill like they do, or it just turns out Bill makes some of these letters up.
Q: Congrats on going 4-0!!! Nobody believed in you!!!!!!
— David, Boston
SG: It took me 20 seconds to realize this wasn't a compliment.
I think David from Boston was going for the whole cliche that teams spout after they win a big game that "no one believed in them." At least I think that's what he was going for.Q: The opening kickoff for Pittsburgh-Denver hitting the CROSSbar and coming to rest exactly on the 20 yard line sure seemed like an Omen, right?
Yes, it was an omen. The best part about Tebow's ascendance (see what I did there?) in the NFL conversation is the use of religious jokes and imagery in writing. I feel like its opened up a whole new avenue of jokes and imagery to use in sports.
A Tebow title coupled with a Clippers championship and you going 11-0 in the NFL playoffs … yeah, those things would make me quit my job and live off my 401k for the next six months until the world ends.
— Mike Desko, Chicago
SG: You don't have to worry about a Clippers championship, Mike — that's not happening on Vinny Del Negro's watch.
"Hi, I'm Bill Simmons and there isn't a single other executive or head coach that is as smart as I am. Everyone should hire me as their General Manager or head coach because I have the ability to make up fake trades and then ask 'who would say no' to the trade. Clearly this talent will translate perfectly to the real world. Someone please hire me."
You'd have a better chance of seeing Chris Paul and Blake Griffin French-kiss after an alley-oop.
I wouldn't put anything past Chris Paul. We all know how much he loves punching men's testicles. Maybe he likes that "athletic bi-racial Ginger" thing Blake Griffin has going for him. It's as if Derek Jeter, Michael Jordan and Carrot Top mated.
(Of course, if they fire Del Negro within the next few weeks and rent Phil Jackson for a four-month, $10 million playoff run … )
And the Clippers would only have to spend $10 million to do this? Where can they sign? Paying out the ass for a head coach is Bill's idea of an innovative way to improve the Clippers. There has to be some middle ground between keeping Del Negro as the head coach and renting Phil Jackson for a playoff run. I'm also not sure Phil Jackson can do much about the roster deficiencies that could plague the Clippers in the playoffs. I can't imagine why no one has hired Bill Simmons as a General Manager yet.
Q: A thousand years from now, will people build scenes of the 2010 NFL-Draft in front of their houses just like they do with the nativity play now? In the Pittsburgh game, they played in the stadium that's closest to heaven (Mile High). Tebow threw for 316 yards. Rothlisberger's interception came on 3rd and 16. Pittsburgh's time of possession was 31 minutes and 6 seconds.
SG: You just described why I have never been more frightened for a Patriots game. It's the first-ever Boston sporting event with zero upside. Name one result that would make Patriots fans feel fantastic afterwards.
How about the Patriots jumping all over the Broncos from the beginning and Tom Brady destroying the Broncos defense for nearly 30 points in the first half? Sure, I cheated and wrote this after the game, but I think Bill wants his readers to feel bad for what sees as the Patriots "no win" situation. He should probably just be happy his favorite team is in the playoffs, but whining about his teams' fate comes so naturally to Bill I'm not sure he can stop.
Even if Super Bowl XLII will always be the worst defeat in the history of the franchise, this particular loss would be more excruciating because we can see it coming …
YES! I love Bill's use of italics for emphasis at the end of a sentence. I would say for many franchises the loss in a Super Bowl is the worst defeat in the history of a franchise. Of course, most other franchises haven't won three Super Bowls over the last decade or so. This is why Bill gives Boston-area fans a bad name because of his inability to be self-aware. The Cleveland Browns haven't won anything significant in decades, yet Bill wants us to know how painful a loss in the playoffs would be for him.
How painful would a loss to the Broncos have been for the Patriots? It would even be worse than that one Super Bowl the Patriots somehow managed to lose. I realize the Pats had lost two straight playoff games and they expect more. Don't even get me started with Bill talking about how he can see the Patriots lose coming, while he also acknowledges what a huge upset it would have been if the Broncos beat the Patriots. No Pats fans wanted lose to the Broncos, but I feel like there should be a little perspective here. Bill is basically complaining his wallet can't fit all the one-hundred dollar bills he has and his diamond shoes are too tight.
If I were a Patriots fan, I would petition that Bill stop writing about New England area sports. I'm not saying Bill doesn't have a right to mourn a tough loss, but the way Bill writes is he seems to attempt to garner sympathy from his readers, many of whom would love their team to have a chance to lose a big game in the playoffs.
Here are four actual e-mails I received from gainfully employed, successful, rational people who root for the Patriots.
I don't want to spoil anything, but they all back Bill's point of view this would be the worst loss in the history of the Patriots team...or at least until next time the Patriots play a big game, in which case Bill sees that potential loss as the biggest loss in the history of the Patriots team. It's so tough being successful. I bet Bill thinks Jaguars fans have it good. At least they don't have to deal with the pain of losing big games.
E-mail no. 3 (a response to E-mail no. 2): "I have spent more time considering where to watch this game than what to feed my child this week
How about you feed your child a dose of perspective this week? Like maybe don't going around acting like someone you love or know has cancer or has died suddenly if the Patriots lose. How about feeding your child the reality that potentially losing a playoff game isn't the end of the world and quit acting like a playoff loss would literally be the end of your life as you know it? The Red Sox are going to be good this year, the Celtics---well they still have Rondo, and you can always jump on the Bruins bandwagon if all else fails.
Home seems like a bad call — I really might break something and it might lead to divorce. I'm a mess about this game too. I really have nothing soothing to say."
Home is a bad call, because breaking something out in public or at a friend's house is so much better than breaking something at home? Your wife won't divorce you if she finds out you destroyed a bar room stool in a hissy fit over your favorite NFL team not winning a game?
Who do you think wrote this next email "to" Bill? See if you can take a guess. Let's look at some characteristics of this email to figure it out.
E-mail no. 4: "My cousin Kristin's wedding reception is at the exact same time as this game. No TV's at the reception — my Dad already checked.
Talking about his father's obsession with his favorite sports team. Actually, talking about his father at all.
We are going to have 40 people grimly huddled around my iPhone watching what promises to be one of the biggest upsets in sports history as we're watching some stolen internet stream that cuts off right as Tebow's potential game-winning pass is soaring in the air, followed by me giving my father CPR for the next 20 minutes.
Another mention of his father reacting negatively to a Boston-related sports event. Extreme pessimism while also predicting the loss would be one of "the biggest upsets in sports history."
(Really? Would the Broncos having beaten the Patriots be one of the biggest upsets in sports history? The Broncos beating the Patriots probably would not have been one of the biggest upsets in sports history. The line on the game was 13.5 points, which is a lot and I am not denying it would be an upset, but one of the biggest upsets in sports as a whole? I think this is using hyperbole in order to prove a point. That point? Feel sorry for the writer of this email because his team is so good, it would stink to lose to a team that isn't very good.)
I have never felt more pessimistic about a sporting event in which my team would have to be beaten by a 7-to-1 underdog to lose — not ever."
Exaggerating what a potential loss would feel like and using hyperbole to describe how he feels before the game, while yet again acknowledging all of his sad feelings are unlikely since it would be a huge upset.
Guess who wrote it...
(By the way, that last e-mail was written by me. And it's all true. Cousin Kristin — you're lucky I like you.)
Bill Simmons wrote it to himself. Bill wrote this email much like the other "emails" in his mailbag that he presumably writes to himself but doesn't cop to it.
Q: The Saints/Lions game is happening as I'm writing this — in fact the Lions are up 14-7 with just under four minutes to play. Game over, Saints win. Why? The camera just showed Stafford with his hat on backwards. Brim-to-the-Back Guy cannot win a Super Bowl, and I don't think there's any way Brim-to-the-Back Guy out-duels Drew Brees in the Superdome.
Here is one Brim-to-the-Back Guy. I'm pretty sure he has won two Super Bowls.
Here is another Brim-to-the-Back Guy. He has won two Super Bowls.
Another Brim-to-the-Back Guy. He has one Super Bowl victory.
My point is perhaps Michael Keeney from Wisconsin should stop trying to be creative and funny in order to impress Bill. The quarterback for the Packers had his hat backwards at media day last year before the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl the Packers won. Fail. Stafford wears his hat backwards a lot, but this is a weak theory since quite a few Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks have worn their hat backwards at some point or another.
Has any Brim-to-the-Back Guy won the big game?
Tom Brady and the other two quarterbacks I linked. I can do what you didn't do and do more research on this non-pertinent issue. You have been in a Bill Simmons mailbag, so I am sure you now consider your life complete and don't care what I have to say.
Some'll claim Big Ben, you can't exactly say he was the leader of those Super Bowl teams.
Yeah, you can. The first Super Bowl the Steelers won despite Roethlisberger's performance, but he definitely led the Steelers to their second Super Bowl. A Brim-to-the-Back Guy won that Super Bowl.
You've got your finger on the pulse; you've the mighty combined forces of Grantland and ESPN's crack research teams.
The only thing Bill has his finger on the pulse of is whatever causes idiots like this to write in to Bill's mailbag and try to be exactly like Bill. To answer this question, you simply need a rudimentary knowledge of how to do an internet search.
SG: This was such a brilliant observation that, for about nine seconds, I thought about stealing the point entirely and pretending I never heard of Michael Keeney of Madison, Wisconsin.
Bill probably isn't kidding. We have reached the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to what is considered "a brilliant observation" if this observation, which also happens to be factually incorrect, is considered brilliant. Bill's mailbags are pretty much a masturbatory venture for him and his readers. The readers are thrilled to be in Bill's mailbag and it excites Bill to see idiots write in to his mailbag, come up with inane theories, and desperately attempt to write like Bill does. The readers get pleasure from seeing Bill print their emails and Bill gets pleasure from seeing how popular he is.
The only elite QB with less of a chance in a big game than Brim-to-the-Back Guy is Brim-to-the-Side Guy. In fact, the secret of Tom Brady's maturation into a franchise QB wasn't dropping to the sixth round; it was when he decided to stop being Brim-to-the-Back Guy.
Well, except for the fact he won a Super Bowl as a Brim-to-the-Back Guy. I'm guessing in order to keep this brilliant observation going, we can just ignore the theory not only is stupid, but also is factually incorrect.
Q: Did Marvin Lewis pull out the best Brad Childress performance of the season in Round One? It was just AWESOME!! I think he took pity on Bill Barnwell and decided to give him material until the end of the season.
— Pierre, Paris, France
Get ready for a Bill Simmons recycled joke. He changes the name, slightly changes the format, and then you have a ready-made recycled joke. Bill has done this quite a few times in his columns, but it started with the Atrocious GM Summit. I recall Bill writing about how a group of bad coaches/GMs should get together on a game show and compete against each other to prove their awfulness quite a few times. The joke worked better as the Atrocious GM Summit when it was introduced about 6 years ago, but because Bill has given up on thinking of actual creative ideas, he rips off his own idea and creates...wait for it...a Bad Head Coach game show. Creative, no? Actually I mean...creative? No.
SG: You know how ESPN tried to turn 2011 into The Year of the Quarterback? I wish we tried to turn 2012 into The Year of the Coach, if only so we could have created a 16-coach game show formatted somewhat like Chopped, with the contestants making impromptu coaching decisions instead of impromptu cooking challenges. Imagine Andy Reid, Marvin Lewis, Brad Childress and Norv Turner battling in the season finale of Botched.
Andy the Host: "Gentlemen, it's the second quarter of a playoff game, you're playing on the road and trailing by three, you're at midfield, the two-minute warning is coming up,
I'll save you the pain. It goes on like that. The idea was great the first time, the second time it wasn't so creative, and now once a few details have been switched around it is simply the same joke told a different way that has the same punchline of "these guys are clueless."
Basically, Bill is trying to pass this idea off as original, when it is just a variation on another one of his ideas. He tries to fool his readers into thinking it isn't recycled. When I used to do JoeChats (R.I.P.) I would sometimes do a "I wonder how this would work in real life..." scenario with one of Joe's responses. It was a continuing theme and I didn't change details around to pretend it wasn't a continuing theme. It's a continuation of a running idea. Bill changes the packaging around in an effort to think a Bad Head Coach show is different from his Atrocious GM Summit or any of the other ideas Bill has had for a coach/player/team/GM to make bad decisions in the company of each other in a competitive format.
Q: I understand why football coaches cover their mouth with their hand, clipboard, play chart, etc. during the game, but wouldn't it just make more sense for the headset manufacturers make the mouth pieces larger so that the full mouth is covered? Wait, did I just give away an amazing business idea??
— Doug, Oakland
SimmonsClones just want so desperately to be seen as creative in Bill's eyes. Do you know how stupid it would look to have a headset mouthpiece cover up the entire mouth? Not to mention when the coach wants to talk to someone who isn't on the headset he would have to push a rather large microphone to the side of the headset. The microphone would probably not go all the way to the side of the headset because the coach's face would be in the way of the huge microphone moving too far up and down.
Q: Has there ever been a more physically gifted WR than Calvin Johnson? Is it even close? He's clearly on the Bo Jackson All Stars (athletes we'll never see clones of.) I'm sure you have time to fill out the rest of that roster, which is way tougher than the NBA version, the Allen Iverson All Stars.
— Brock E., Denver
Another variation of the same theme. An All-Star team being named where each individual on the "team" have the same characteristic. I think Bill Simmons is very talented and when he gives a crap there aren't too many better writers. When he doesn't give a crap, we get another All-Star team named in a mailbag and then later posted to his Wikipedia page.
My list is short and sweet: Bo, Deion, Calvin Johnson, Randy Moss, Michael Vick, Steve Young, Lawrence Taylor, Walter Payton, Randall Cunningham … and we're done, unless you want to include Jerry Rice (for being a freak just for being so technically perfect/precise) or Rob Gronkowski (who probably would have made the list if not for Jimmy Graham, who's equally superfreakish, which somehow nullifies the superfreakishness of both guys because part of being a freak is having no frequal).
So two players at the same position can't be on the team because their "superfreakishness" cancel each other out. Yet, Calvin Johnson and Randy Moss are both on the team, as are Randall Cunningham and Steve Young. Bill makes the rules, then somewhat contradicts his own rules. Not to mention, the idea a person who is a freak has no equal is faulty. A freak is a person who is unusual or irregular. There can be more than two irregular tight ends in the NFL at the same time.
Q: I just read your newest mailbag. I was disappointed because I spent most of it reading the bold text. You are an excellent and intelligent writer. Your readers, typically, are not. I would like to hear more from you and less from them. Please consider my concerns.
Sincerely, Finney.
— Finney, Clemson
SG: I'm guessing Finney didn't enjoy the last few e-mails. And for the record — the mailbag is my favorite column to write and has been since 1997. So there.
Bill attempts to pass it off like he enjoys writing the mailbag because it gives his readers a chance to speak. I would submit that's false. Bill likes to write his mailbags because it is an ego trip for him to read so many people write in trying to sound, act and think like he himself does. Above all, it seems Bill has an innate need to be adored and be considered the smartest guy in the room. He needs confirmation he is adored and he is the smartest guy in the room. His mailbag confirms both of these things for him. Believe me, I don't dislike Bill Simmons but I also don't believe he has very much respect for the readers that have made him so famous and successful.Q: An idea for the 18-game schedule: each team plays 18 games, but (except for kickers and punters), no player can play in more than 16 games during the regular season. And this should be strongly enforced — if a player plays in even one play in a game, that counts as one of the 16. Imagine the endless debates over what games you decide to rest your best players — do you rest your starting QB against the weakest team you play, or maybe the best if you figure you're not beating that team anyway? Do you rest all your best players in two games, or mix and match? NFL Countdown would have to expand to 5 hours!!
— Mark Wooster, L.A.
I kicked around this idea a bit a year ago when the owners seemed to want to go to an 18 game schedule. It's scary for me I have the same idea as a SimmonsClone. Of course, eventually Bill will claim this idea for his own like he did with the Ewing Theory.
In fact, here's a vague, loosely-held together theory for you. Bill Simmons is like the band U2. Here the parallels I draw:
Early career
Bill Simmons wrote differently from the perspective of his audience. He was one of them and wrote like you and your friends talked and talked about the same things you and your friends talked about. He was good enough to write mainstream, but didn't write like mainstream writers. There was something different about him.
U2 was a different band. Political, but still rock and with enough mainstream sound to be mainstream, but was different from mainstream bands. They were like a college band that made it big.
Reaction to success
Bill Simmons reacted to success by writing a lot of the same things he had written before. He expanded on his previous theories and attempted to start new theories. Then he attempted to expand on his success in different avenues by writing for the Jimmy Kimmel Show and doing a Sports Guy cartoon. The audience didn't like that as much.
U2 reacted to success well (Achtung Baby) and expanded on their previous sound on that album. U2 then tried to expand on the sound more to take the group's sound in a different direction, but still be U2 (Zooropa). This wasn't popular with the audience.
Response to initial failure
Bill Simmons responded to the (somewhat) failure of writing for a talk show by diving back into his columns, writing a book, and expanded his brand at ESPN by executive producing "30 for 30." He achieved success doing this. Bill Simmons had found what worked for him and he wanted to search out change, but within the cocoon of knowing he still worked for ESPN.com.
U2 reacted to the failure of Zooropa and Pop, by writing an incredibly U2-sounding album "All That You Can't Leave Behind." They achieved success by going back to their original sound. They had re-found success and wanted to search out slight changes in sound, but within the cocoon of still sounding like U2.
Later Career
Bill Simmons started Grantland.com, which is a site where he writes once a week, mostly writing non-challenging columns which doesn't really show growth in Simmons' writing ability nor does it really present anything new to the audience. It is popular, so Simmons is more comfortable being popular and re-creating his previous ideas than challenging himself to get better. He has seen mainstream success and failure and knows what it takes for each. His writing doesn't need to improve because people will read his columns and his Grantland.com venture is backed by ESPN (and other great writers), so the odds of failure probably aren't great.
U2 followed up "All That You Can't Leave Behind" with essentially two sequel albums that sound very U2-ish. It doesn't change the U2 sound around. The band knows what sells albums and what audiences want to hear. They don't want to see them expand on their sound, they want U2 to re-create previously successful ideas. They know what mainstream success requires and what could have the potential to fail. The band's writing doesn't need to improve because people will buy their albums and the band has enough name recognition and forums to get their music out a new album with the "U2-sound" won't fail at this point.
I have always thought of U2 as the same band as R.E.M. if R.E.M. re-wrote "Out of Time" every four years, which they didn't. This made R.E.M. less popular, but I think it gave them more credibility as artists. There's nothing wrong with either Bill Simmons or U2 doing this, but I would like to see both of them grow a little more in their art.
SG: A possible wrinkle: If every team plays 18 games, that's 72 quarters in all … so why not tweak it so every player (except kickers and punters) can only play 62 quarters total?
Because that overcomplicates the issue. Bill's need to always improve on someone's idea, because he can't he isn't the smartest guy in the room, backfires here.
Did I mention that, as I type this email, I'm down on knees literally praying that my Tampa Bay Buccaneers hire 68 year old Marty "One and Done" Schottenheimer instead of Wade Phillips, Brad Childress or Mike Sherman? Not that those two thoughts are related or anything.
— Brandon, Vancouver
SG: Here's why I think the Bucs should hire Marty — you know how old people reach that stage when they just don't give a crap anymore and it's awesome?
(Cue overly long explanation that could be summed up easily in two sentences, but won't be due to Bill believing he comes off as more creative by comparing one thing to another in order to explain what he means rather than just saying what the hell he means)
That reminds me, here's a good rule of thumb for trades and coaching hirings: Float the guy's name out as a possibility, then check out the reaction from fans of his old team (bloggers, message boards, sports radio, etc.).
Remember, this guy actually believes he can be an NBA General Manager. We all know the most intelligent, non-reactionary group of people in the world are bloggers, people on message boards and callers to sports radio. Checking the reaction of these fans from his old team in no way could fail, could it? What could go wrong?
If the consensus can be described as "incredulously, deliriously and overwhelmingly sarcastic," you shouldn't trade for that player or hire that coach. It's that simple.
Yep, it's that simple. Bill Simmons for Bucks GM!
As a quick aside, I want everyone to remember in his January 6 mailbag Bill Simmons said the 49ers would not make the Super Bowl because their quarterback is Alex Smith. Bill then predicted the 49ers would beat the Saints.
Then Ragnar from Honolulu, who I won't rip because he lives in Hawaii and I want to live in Hawaii, criticizes Jim Nantz's call of the Steelers-Broncos game.
SG: I mean, Nantz had 10 minutes between the end of regulation and the first play from scrimmage in OT to come up with a clearly-written-ahead-of-time line just in case Tebow threw a game-winning pass in overtime!
Let's look at these lines Nantz should have come up with if Tebow threw the game-winning pass:
"Eighty yards, no flags, one miracle!"
I can somewhat see this one. Nantz would have to predict the play was a miracle, which any touchdown by the Broncos in overtime would be called a miracle regardless of whether it was or not. Nantz would have just inserted the amount of yards on the touchdown pass into his call. Still, for this specific call Nantz would have had to predict Tebow would throw an 80 yard touchdown pass.
"This is the dawning of the age of Demaryius!"
So before Demaryius Thomas caught the game winning touchdown pass, Jim Nantz should have predicted it was Demaryius Thomas who would catch the game winning touchdown pass? Nantz was expected to predict the Broncos would not only throw a game-winning touchdown pass, but that Demaryius Thomas would be the one to catch that pass, and then think of a catchy phrase to reflect this? This is what Nantz should have been doing in between the fourth quarter ending and overtime beginning? It just seems like this is a lot of predictions to make. Does Bill expect Nantz to do this with every Broncos player prior to overtime?
"Sudden death, sudden life, Tebow rises again!"
The Broncos never trailed in the game. This phrase therefore doesn't make sense.
"Look out, New England — the white Bronco is still on the loose!"
Creative, but a white Bronco isn't really relevant to New England and this seems like it would be roundly mocked. Of course, who am I to argue with Bill Simmons?
Q: Imagine if a Tim Tebow sex tape came out. It would have to be the biggest sex scandal fallout since Bill Clinton right? I asked several of my friends if they would rather see that or their football team win the Super Bowl and we all went with the sex tape.
— Ben Kendrick, West Hartford
The idiocy of Bill's readers sometimes shocks me. This guy's friends would rather see a Tim Tebow sex tape rather than their favorite team win the Super Bowl? I think he's making this up.
Q: I've been sucked into the Tebow magic but the porn industry seems to be dragging its feet. My buddy Marc and I were trying to come up with a proper name for the inevitable XXX Tebow movie and the best I could come up with was Bible Banger. Marc had the better one: A Third That's Long.
— Mike, Chicago
SG: All that work and neither of you could come up with Raging Tebowner? Yup, this is your sports columnist.Yeah Bill, Mike from Chicago's idea was better.
Trying to remain objective while breaking down what would unquestionably be the most horrifying loss in Patriots history — not the worst, not the most bitter, but the most horrifying — was tougher than I thought. But here's the key point: You can't call the Broncos a "Nobody Believes in Us" team anymore.
And yet, earlier in this column Bill said the Patriots losing the Broncos would have been one of the biggest upsets in sports history. I'm confused. So the Broncos can't say "Nobody Believes in Us" anymore, but if they had beaten the Patriots it would have been one of the greatest upsets in sports history?
On Football Outsiders, Aaron Schatz wrote that — if Denver beat New England — it would be the third biggest upset of the last 20 years by F.O.'s DVOA ratings, trailing only Super Bowl XLII (arrrrgh) and Colts-Chiefs in 1995 (a gloriously macabre combination of bad luck, turnovers and Marty being Marty).
Bill leaves out an important point. Aaron Schatz wrote it would be the third biggest NFL PLAYOFF upset in the last 20 years if the Broncos had won. I still somewhat question if the Patriots losing to the Broncos would have been one of the greatest upsets in sports history. Maybe it would be one of the greatest upsets, of course it didn't happen so it doesn't really matter.
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