0 comments Mike Klis Is Still Not Taking the Broncos Super Bowl Loss Very Well

We first heard from Mike Klis when he stated the key to winning the Super Bowl is to lose games. Well, the Broncos dutifully did as he suggested and lost the Super Bowl, but that probably doesn't count as what Klis was talking about. Then we heard from Mike Klis when he started dropping excuses/reasons for the Broncos Super Bowl loss. He was acting like an angry fan-boy who couldn't handle that his favorite team lost the Super Bowl. Well, Mike is still acting like a baby and still not taking the Broncos Super Bowl loss very well. He's very excited for the Broncos to face the Seahawks twice (yes, he is including the abomination that is an NFL preseason game) so the Broncos can exact revenge. Because we all know a victory in Week 3 is directly equal to a Super Bowl victory. It's pretty much the same thing. My apologies to those who read Mike Klis in the Denver area. He sounds hideous. I'm sure all in the Denver area get tired of his schtick.

Can't anybody tell those mouthy Seahawks in Seattle to shut up?

I wasn't aware the Seahawks were still talking junk about the Broncos and their Super Bowl victory over the Broncos. It sounds like Mike Klis is reminiscing rather than the reality being that the Seahawks are still rubbing their Super Bowl victory in...at least to my knowledge. 

"We really felt like we could knock the crud out of these guys," Carroll said shortly after 43-8. 

That was seven months ago. It's a new season. Let it go. Carroll was cocky after the Super Bowl victory and now he's stopped talking about it. Perhaps Mike Klis should take the hint and do the same. 

Seattle linebacker K.J. Wright said his team would beat the Broncos "90 out of 100. They might've got lucky those other 10 times."

I'm pretty sure Mike Klis used this exact quote in his last bitter, fan-boy column about the Broncos losing to the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. If he's going to write a column which starts off insinuating the Seahawks are still being "mouthy" and not shutting up, then he may want to find new quotes that show this to be truth. Otherwise, this column is just message board material. Actually, it's worse than message board material because it's intended to be sports journalism. 

Act like you've won it before. Oh, wait. They hadn't. 

What a burn. Act like the Broncos have won it in the last 15 years or don't have a 2-5 record in Super Bowls. Nothing against the Broncos, but a team that has gone 2-5 in the Super Bowl doesn't exactly have room to taunt a team that has gone 1-1 in Super Bowls and just manhandled the 2-5 team in the Super Bowl. "Count the rings" usually feels like a loser's argument coming from the loser of the Super Bowl.

"That's where they get their edge from," Broncos defensive tackle Terrance Knighton said. "They have a quarterback (Russell Wilson) who came in underrated. People don't talk about their offensive line. Sherman was a fifth-round pick. Then they have receivers with chips on their shoulders.

"That's how they make themselves feel better, or build their image. But they have the right talk."

The Seahawks incessant talk could hide some inferiority complex, but they are the reigning Super Bowl champions. To shut them up, you have to beat them. The Seahawks will have the right talk until they can no longer back that talk up.

Chest-thumping became cheap shot, though, when another windbagged Seattle linebacker, Bobby Wagner, took the bait from ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, a loquacious man himself.

"They looked scared out there," Wagner said. "Nobody wanted to catch the ball. Nobody wanted to come up the middle. ... They were very timid."
 
Bobby Wagner said these things back immediately after the Super Bowl. Come on, write a new article and don't just take the same quotes from the old less-than-message board material article and claim the Seahawks are still talking shit. No one needs to close the Seahawks big mouths because they aren't running their mouths anymore. 

It's correct to say Seattle destroyed the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII. Beat them up. Bullied them.

But scared to come up the middle? Demaryius Thomas set a Super Bowl record with 13 catches — averaging 9 tough yards per reception.

It's correct to say Demaryius Thomas did have these 13 catches for 9 yards per reception, but that's a little misleading. Here is the funny part, Mike Klis knows it's misleading but doesn't really care. 

Granted, the record meant nothing. Many of those catches were in garbage time. But it does mean Wagner's claim is a lie.

Granted the record that Mike Klis just recited as if it meant something in response to Bobby Wagner's comments made 7 months ago means nothing to him, but wouldn't it be cool if this record did mean something? 

Let's look at Demaryius Thomas's catches to see if Wagner's claim is a lie. He's probably using hyperbole, but let's see the yardage of catches Thomas made, where he made them, and when he made them.

From the play-by-play: 

1- P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to DEN 40 for 2 yards (1st quarter)
 
2- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass short right to D.Thomas to DEN 22 for 6 yards (2nd quarter)
 
3- P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas to DEN 25 for 3 yards (2nd quarter)
 
4- P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas to DEN 37 for 7 yards (2nd quarter)
 
5- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short right to D.Thomas to DEN 40 for 1 yard (2nd quarter)
 
6- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short right to D.Thomas to SEA 34 for 9 yards (2nd quarter)
 
7- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass deep left to D.Thomas to SEA 43 for 19 yards (2nd quarter)
 
8- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas to SEA 46 for 4 yards (3rd quarter)
 
9- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to SEA 43 for 3 yards (3rd quarter)
 
10- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to SEA 44 for 10 yards (3rd quarter)
 
11- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass deep left to D.Thomas to SEA 21 for 23 yards (3rd quarter)
 
12- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to D.Thomas for 14 yards (3rd quarter)
 
13- P.Manning pass short middle to D.Thomas to DEN 45 for 17 yards (4th quarter)

So Mike Klis is partially wrong. 7 of the 13 catches Thomas made were in the first half, not garbage time. Thomas did have more yardage in garbage time though.

Thomas caught four passes over the middle for gains of 2, 3, 10, 17 yards. 
Thomas caught three passes on the right for gains of 6, 1, and 9 yards. 
Thomas caught 6 passes on the left for gains of 3, 7, 19, 4, 23, and 14 yards. 

Thomas averaged 8 yards per catch in the middle, 5.3 yards per catch on the right, and 11.7 yards per catch on the left. It's not right to negate one of the catches but I think it's important to know his average in the middle would have been 5 yards per catch if the last catch in the fourth quarter when it was a 43-8 game wasn't counted. So Thomas does seem to have gotten more yardage in garbage time, but not more receptions. I don't believe the Broncos were scared to come over the middle, but Thomas did gain 71 of his 118 yards in the second half when the Seahawks were playing a softer defense. His average yards per catch was 6.7 in the first half. It's impossible to know if the Broncos were scared or not, but the numbers reflect while Thomas caught the ball for longer gains in the second half, in the first half when the game wasn't entirely decided the Seahawks had managed to keep his gains to a minimum.

It's nearly impossible to know if Wagner's claim is a lie anyway and it doesn't really matter. 

Wes Welker caught eight passes. He receives between the hash marks.

Welker's catches during the Super Bowl: 

1- (Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to DEN 25 for 5 yards (1st quarter)

2- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to SEA 43 for 16 yards (2nd quarter)

3- 1st and 10 at SEA 43 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to SEA 38 for 5 yards (2nd quarter)

4- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to W.Welker to DEN 37 for 14 yards (3rd quarter)

5- 1st and 20 at DEN 10 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to DEN 13 for 3 yards (3rd quarter)

6- 1st and 10 at DEN 41 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to W.Welker to SEA 47 for 12 yards (3rd quarter)

7- 1st and 10 at SEA 36 (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short left to W.Welker pushed ob at SEA 14 for 22 yards (3rd quarter)

8- (No Huddle, Shotgun) P.Manning pass short middle to W.Welker to SEA 47 for 7 yards (4th quarter)

Five of Welker's eight catches were over the middle. So for the sake of fairness I'm not going to leave out an assertion Mike Klis makes that has merit. It doesn't seem the Broncos were scared to go over the middle. If that's his big victory coming from the Super Bowl, that Bobby Wagner exaggerated in making this statement, then I hope it's a great moral victory for Klis. 

It wasn't a case of intimidation," said Broncos tight end Julius Thomas, who caught four Super Bowl passes. "That's certain. When you win and you're the Super Bowl champion, you've earned the right to say whatever you want. That's something that can't be taken away from them.

Yeah, but Mike Klis wishes the Seahawks would stop mouthing off about their Super Bowl victory, even though they haven't really mouthed off about it publicly in several months. In Mike's fan-boy head, the Seahawks are still chirping about intimidating the Broncos. It's causing him to go insane. 

The Broncos and Seahawks meet again in their preseason opener, Aug. 7 at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. The starters won't play long. Just long enough to get some pushing and shoving in.

But if the Broncos win this game, then revenge is Mike Kli---I mean, revenge is the Broncos to savor!

The teams meet again for keeps in Week 3 of the regular season.

Yes, this regular season game is "for keeps." The season ends after this game is played. If the Broncos are able to defeat the Seahawks in Week 3 then the Super 48 title will be handed to Denver and the Seahawks will forever be shamed. This Week 3 game is "for keeps," just as long as the other 13 games each team plays, as well as the playoffs, aren't counted as being part of the 2014 NFL season, which apparently is how Mike Klis views it. 

That game will be played in Seattle. Home of the gloats.

I'm pretty sure the Seahawks stopped gloating a few months ago. The reality in Mike's head isn't adjusting well to this.

The visiting team's locker room figures to have a filled bulletin board.

Does the visiting team's locker room even get a bulletin board to hang comments the home team has made in the past on? I feel like a bulletin board isn't provided to the visiting team. Maybe the comments will be written on the whiteboard in the Broncos locker room. Even if the Broncos beat the Seahawks 43-8, it won't make up for the Super Bowl loss. It may be revenge, but it will be a bittersweet revenge. Well, except for a sportswriter like Mike Klis who seems to think a regular season game counts as playing "for keeps." 

"Me, personally, I'm tired of hearing about it: Seahawks, Seahawks, Seahawks," Knighton said. "We accomplished some things last year. Not everything we wanted, but we took a step forward from the year before. We're going to reload, and when the time comes, we'll be ready to play them. And it's a good thing we play them twice."

And when/if the Broncos beat the Seahawks we can be sure that Mike Klis will write a column about how the loud mouthed Seahawks have finally been shut up, despite the fact they quit talking smack about the Broncos a few months ago, and he will believe revenge was really sweet and the teams are now considered "even." Good for him. It won't be true, of course. If the Seahawks win that Week 3 game, which is apparently the most crucial regular season game ever, then I'm sure Mike Klis will complain further about the Seahawks big mouths...or just blame it all on injuries.

7 comments Gregg Easterbrook Continues to Complain about the Most Pointless Things He Sees Take Place in Movies

Gregg Easterbrook wrote about fast-paced offenses again last week in TMQ, continued to criticize NFL teams for not making the correct calls on fourth down using his overwhelming grasp of hindsight (except in the case of the Falcons, who went for it on fourth down at the goal line before halftime as opposed to kicking a field goal and this was the difference in the Falcons winning and losing the game), and then generally wrote the same annoying TMQ he writes every week. This week Gregg says the Saints celebrated too quickly and that's why they lost to the Patriots, pimps his book out again, and complains that Hollywood shows people sleeping more heavily than they actually do. Yes, we are at the point where Gregg is criticizing how Hollywood shows that people sleep. It's getting ridiculous.

Has any team ever looked more dead than New England did when, trailing New Orleans, the Patriots turned the ball over twice with less than three minutes remaining?

Yes, many other teams have looked even more dead than the Patriots did against the Saints.

The Patriots looked dead enough to audition as extras for the sequel to "World War Z."

Great joke. Thanks Rick Reilly. 

But the Saints were in the process of making a colossal blunder. New Orleans players and coaches were celebrating on the sideline: hugging, slapping hands. Never celebrate when the game isn't over! The football gods punish that sort of thing.

Well, that and the New England Patriots defense punishes this sort of thing by not allowing the Saints to pick up a first down.

In Game 6 of the 1993 NBA Finals, the Phoenix Suns held a seemingly safe lead over Chicago with a minute remaining. Charles Barkley and Dan Majerle began clowning around and mugging to the home crowd. Michael Jordan noticed, and his eyes took on a steely gaze: The Bulls won on a closing-seconds 3 by John Paxson.

The Bulls were down like four points with less than a minute left and when hasn't Charles Barkley mugged for a crowd? It's his thing. Gregg writes great fiction.

Fox analyst Troy Aikman said Bill Belichick made this call because he didn't trust his defense to stop New Orleans. Actually, the New England defense is playing strangely well this season -- ranked fifth in points allowed. Belichick made the call because he thought the Patriots could convert, and they needed the ball in order to score. Instead an accurate pass was dropped. New Orleans takes over on the 24, and the exodus to the parking lot begins.

But verily the football gods rewarded the Patriots for being miserable failures on fourth down through fault of their own and helped them get the ball back? The football gods reward teams for dropping crucial passes?

One snap later, the Saints would make the first of four colossal errors. New Orleans dawdled coming up to the line and, seeing the play clock about to expire, Drew Brees spent the Saints' final timeout. Trading a timeout for 5 yards was a bad move, since a walk-off would have left the Saints in field goal position anyway.

Yeah, because making sure the Saints get a first down so they could drain the clock and win the game shouldn't have been the Saints #1 priority. Ensuring they don't have to gain 5 extra yards to get the first down and drain the game clock isn't important at all. Gregg is brilliant when using hindsight.

Why would a team in the driver's seat need to conserve its last timeout?

They really wouldn't need to. But wait! Gregg has the ability to use hindsight and he knows why the Saints could have used this timeout.

It is always good to have a timeout in your pocket: They can be useful on defense as well as offense.

Just in case the Saints need to stop the clock on defense, which would allow the Patriots to huddle and possibly draw up a play that helps them win the game. Logic would dictate that if a team on offense has no timeouts then it isn't always smart to call a timeout and allow that team on offense the luxury of time to get everyone on the same page. We all know if Sean Payton had saved a timeout and then used that timeout while on defense then Gregg would have criticized Payton for calling a timeout and giving Tom Brady time to regroup the offense. Gregg would then say you should never call timeout and give a quarterback like Brady a chance to regroup. No matter whether the Saints used this timeout on offense or defense, Gregg was going to find a way to criticize them because they lost the game.

Another snap later, New Orleans made a second colossal blunder. Facing third-and-7 on the New England 21 with 2:33 remaining, Brees threw incomplete -- stopping the clock. 

Wait, so stopping the clock by calling a timeout on offense is a bad move, but stopping the clock on defense is a good move? Gregg just wrote that the Saints could have used their timeout on defense instead of using it on offense, but now he criticizes the Saints for throwing an incomplete pass that stopped the clock with more than two minutes remaining. Does Gregg realize a timeout stops the clock? See, I told you that no matter what the Saints did, Gregg would criticize them because they lost the game. He thinks the Saints should use a timeout to stop the clock on defense, but then criticizes the Saints for throwing a pass and stopping the clock on offense.

Also, doesn't fortune favor the bold? The Saints were being bold and trying to pick up the first down, so why didn't fortune favor them?

Considering the Patriots' winning touchdown came with five seconds showing, if on this snap the Saints had simply run up the middle for no gain, they almost certainly would have won. Instead, because New Orleans stopped the clock before the two-minute warning, New England was able to get the ball back with 1:13. What a blunder by Saints coaches.

This is why the Saints using their last timeout on offense wasn't a big deal, because if the Saints defense had called a timeout on the last drive it would have stopped the clock for the Patriots offense.

Another completion puts New England on the New Orleans 17; Brady spikes the ball at 10 seconds. The New Orleans defense looks disordered -- didn't the network already declare the game over? 

The Saints can't hear the broadcast so what the broadcasters have stated is of no relevance to the Saints at this point in the game.

Lacking a timeout, the Saints cannot pause to collect themselves.

But calling a timeout would have also helped the Patriots better collect themselves. The Saints had time to collect themselves in the same manner the Patriots offense had time to call a play they wanted to run. The Saints lost the game because of poor defensive execution. Calling a timeout won't suddenly make Jabari Greer a better defender or make Rob Ryan call a defensive play that allowed Greer to have safety help. The Saints didn't need a timeout to get this done because it was all about execution and the Saints didn't execute.

On the winning down, there were fifth and sixth Saints blunders. New Orleans corner Jabari Greer made the high school mistake of looking into the backfield trying to guess the play, rather than simply guarding his man. Receiver Kenbrell Thompkins was single-covered going to the end zone, no safety around, though the pass absolutely had to go into the end zone.

Would a timeout have solved this? It wasn't a miscommunication, but a bad play by Greer that helped Thompkins catch the game-winning touchdown. There appeared to be no confusion on the part of the Saints, but the defensive play call didn't give Greer safety help.

There have been fantastic comebacks before, but never one on which the comeback team looked so totally dead. Just right for preparing for Halloween!

Halloween is over two weeks away. How can a game that happened on October 13 have anything to do with Halloween? This is Halloween Creep! 

In football-trend news, you will be assimilated by the offense, resistance is futile. Latest indicator: Week 6 began with the Texans and Jets having the league's two best defenses statistically. Both lost at home, by a combined 57-19.

Yeah, but remember you have always said the defenses will catch up around November?

Stats of the Week No. 6: The Giants are 0-6, have committed 23 turnovers, and are three games out of first place.

It's almost like these three events are related in some way.

Sweet Play of the Week: At Minnesota, the Carolina Panthers ran the flea-flicker -- tailback starts up the middle, then flips the ball back to the quarterback. Rather than pitch deep, Cam Newton threw a tight end screen, with pulling offensive linemen. First down, Cats score on the possession and go on to win in a rout. Your columnist has attended way too many football games, and never seen the flea-flicker used to set up a screen. Sweet.

This was actually a horrendous play when viewed on television or on replay. It looked rushed and like the Panthers had drawn the play up in the sand. Shocker of all shockers, it was the offensive line coach's idea to run this play.

Embattled coach Ron Rivera, excoriated for conservative tactics, went for it twice on fourth-and-1 on the Cats' opening drive, including on fourth-and-goal. Touchdown, and an aggressive tempo was set. Sweet, on a day when fourth-and goal tries by Baltimore and Buffalo were stuffed.

And shockingly these last two teams weren't rewarded for their aggressive tactics by winning the game. 

Indianapolis, trailing 13-6, punted on fourth-and-short from the San Diego 40 late in the third quarter, which must have caused millions of people to write the words "game over" in their heads.

No, pretty much only you write "game over" in a notebook during a football game.

Sweet 'N' Sour Special Teams: Behind practice-squad quarterback Thad Lewis, Buffalo scored two late touchdowns to take the favored Bengals to overtime. In the fifth quarter, the teams exchanged punts; after the second, the Bengals' Brandon Tate broke two tackles and returned the ball 29 yards to the Bills' 33, setting up the winning kick. That was sweet. When Cincinnati punted a few snaps before, Leodis McKelvin, the 11th player selected in the 2008 draft, not only did not try to return an overtime punt, he called a fair catch at the Buffalo 7. Very sour -- never fair catch inside your own 10! Had McKelvin stepped away from the ball, there was a good chance of a touchback.

I will concede McKelvin possibly should not have caught this punt, but was there a good chance of the punt being a touchback? How does Gregg know this or is he just making shit up in order to better prove a point he wants to make? I think I know the answer, but there's no telling where that ball would have bounced if it had hit the ground. It could have gone sideways and rolled out at the one-yard line, bounced into the end zone for a touchback, been downed at the three-yard line, or bounced 20 yards and the Bills would have had the ball at the 27-yard line.

My point is that Gregg is making his typical "there was a good chance of X happening" statement when he doesn't have any proof that there was a good chance of X happening.

Here is a New York Times op-ed article spun out of my new book, "The King of Sports." 

It's another reminder from Gregg that he has a book out, as if his reminders for the past six weeks went unheeded. 

The article notes that Theodore Roosevelt has been treated kindly by historians for his 1905 initiative to reform football; that like Teddy, Barack Obama is a huge fan of football but also concerned with its many defects; I propose that Obama, like Roosevelt, use the bully pulpit of the White House to pressure the football establishment for reform.

I propose that President Obama has more important things to worry about here in the United States and overseas than reforming college football. How about Obama use his bully pulpit to help Congress get along and then perform his Presidential duties and let football reform stay on the backburner for the time being?

The Bills organization praised itself for avoiding the blackout, saying Wilson had "generously" bought remaining tickets. He would have paid about $400,000 -- about $275,000 after taxes, since the purchase was a business expense. So Wilson gets a $95 million gift from taxpayers whose incomes are far lower than his, then is praised for giving back $275,000 -- about a third of 1 percent.

I guess the Bills organization didn't have to buy the remaining tickets to avoid the blackout. The reason taxpayers give this large gift is because they enjoy football and receive a supposed financial benefit in the form of revenue generated for the city because a football team is located there. Yes, Wilson gets revenue as well...you know what, I can't defend the blackout rules because they are stupid. Even if Wilson wasn't that generous, it was still nice for him to buy the tickets to avoid the blackout.

Here is more on how the NFL fleeces taxpayers.

Don't click on the link. It's a link to an article that Gregg has written. He's linking columns he wrote and not mentioning to us that he wrote the column before linking it. It's a page out of the Bill Simmons playbook. "I'm right and here is another example of my opinion to prove that I am right because I agree with myself."

The Football Gods Chortled: The week before, New Orleans lined up to go for it on fourth-and-1, then Drew Brees used a hard count to draw the Chicago defense offside. Now at New England, New Orleans lined up to go for it on fourth-and-1. Brees barked a hard count -- and his teammates jumped offside.

I don't know. It certainly looked like the Patriots defense encroached, which caused the Saints offensive lineman to jump before the snap. This looked like a bad call against the Saints to me.

It's nutty enough that in the movies and on TV, when lovers awake after a night of passionate sex, they're wearing underwear. Apparently actors and actresses get out of bed, put their bras and boxers back on, then return to bed to sleep.

But no Gregg, these people literally do this. I mean, they actually wake up and go put their clothes back on. It happens. I know Gregg has suddenly become all about nakedness over the past year (mainly in reference to Colin Kaepernick and Tim Tebow of course), but sometimes after passionate sex these lovers will get dressed again.

Nuttier still is the Hollywood cliché scene in which, after a night of wild lovemaking with a mysterious stranger, a man or woman awakes to find the stranger gone. That mysterious bombshell with the glowing lip gloss, that mysterious hunk with the square chin, got out of bed, dressed and departed without making the slightest sound.

I feel based on his description here that Gregg has a lot of sexual fantasies about mysterious people having sex. 

Again, this happens all the time. I wake up in the morning and will go mow the grass, take a shower and leave the house, go get coffee, or do some other household chore without my wife waking up. What is really nutty is that Gregg thinks a person can't sleep through another person in the room getting dressed. If you are quiet and the other person is dead asleep, this is easy to do. I don't even know why I am talking about this or why Gregg is talking about this.

A common improbable special effect in Hollywood is the space alien or demon with glowing eyes. If the eyes emitted light, wouldn't that stop them from working as eyes?

I don't know. Ask Superman. Also, it's a fucking movie.

These scenes are goofy all right -- but TMQ thinks the most improbable scene in all Hollywood annals occurs in the first "Godfather" movie. The sleazy Los Angeles producer wakes up to find a horse's head in his bed, and the mansion echoes with his screams of terror. The producer's hands and silk pajamas are soaked in bright red blood, possible only if the horse was slaughtered on the premises that morning. (Blood turns brown when exposed to air.) How did mobsters slaughter a horse at the mansion, then enter the bedroom and place a large, heavy object on the bed, soaking the sleazy producer in warm blood, without making any noise?

I don't know. It doesn't seem incredibly hard. They killed the horse and then dragged the horse's head, using more than one person, up to the producer's room and then placed it on the bed while the producer was sleeping. Some people are really heavy sleepers. If this is really the most improbable scene in Hollywood annals then Gregg needs to stop complaining about the lack of realism in movies.

Now back to "The Bridge." After the gorgeous widow awakes to find her lover departed without making the slightest sound, she decides to walk to the barn. Wouldn't that be your first move after a night of wild lovemaking?

If I had horses in stalls that I enjoyed visiting, an underground tunnel that led to Mexico used for transporting guns/illegal immigrants/drugs, and a hired hand who may know where the departed lover went off to (all of which this character has), then yes, possibly this would be my first move.

In the barn, she screams in horror -- the scene is shot and paced to remind of the "Godfather" scene -- after finding her prize racehorse has been slaughtered and suspended from the rafters, as a warning to her from a Mexican drug cartel. The bad guys killed a horse and lifted it into the rafters -- without making any noise.

Nobody said they didn't make noise. They didn't make enough noise to wake someone up in the house. This character lives on a huge ranch for God's sake. Does Gregg hear things happen in the garage two doors down from his house? Probably not, so it's very likely the character wouldn't have super-powered hearing that allowed her to hear a horse being killed out in the stables in the middle of the night.

Polls show the approval rating for the House of Representatives has shrunk to a rock-bottom 5 percent. The 5 percent satisfied with Congress -- who are these crackpots?

And yet, all of these same Congressmen will be re-elected during the next elections. The approval ratings means nothing because districts are so gerrymandered that the incumbents have a great chance of being re-elected.

One of the puzzles of modern politics is the number of hard-core types who devote themselves to denouncing government -- after first ensuring they personally enjoy the pay and benefits of government positions. The majority of the 2012 Republican presidential contenders have spent most or all of their adult lives sheltered in government employment. Pretty sweet hustle: Enjoy government benefits while demanding that others not be allowed to receive them.

The right's man of the hour is Sen. Ted Cruz, who has advanced anti-government vitriol to an art form. Yet he himself spent only a few years in the private sector: Most of his adult life he's been in state and local government. Paul Ryan is the right's intellectual of the hour. He too has spent most of his adult life enjoying the pay and perks of government, after a few years in the private sector -- working for his family's firm, where there was no risk of being fired.

I get what point Gregg wants to make here, but there is a difference in living off the pay and perks of the government, as compared to living a life of public service. I know it sounds corny in this day and age, but many important political figures through United States history have served for a long-time in the public sector. It used to be considered noble to use your talents to help out the general public as opposed to working in the private sector. So there is a fine line between saying these Congressmen have been sheltered in government employment and saying they wanted to work in the public sector. Besides, it's hard to be a real presidential candidate if you don't have a resume showing you have led in other parts of government. A presidential candidate with a short track record of public service is considered unqualified by many to be President of the United States, so many presidential candidates self-select in that they will have enough public service in other areas as mayor, governor, or Congressperson to be considered qualified in running for President.

The home crowd in Massachusetts booed the Patriots when they were ahead in the fourth quarter! The booing was because a red zone drive stalled, culminating in a field goal. The home crowd booed Super Bowl hero Tom Brady when he threw a late pick. What have you done for us lately? Oh wait, what you did was one of the sport's all-time comebacks.

Let's calm it down a little bit. It was a great comeback, but I'm not sure I'm ready to call the Patriots victory over the Saints one of the sport's all-time comebacks. Not to mention it's stupid to criticize Patriots fans for booing Brady. The Patriots fans didn't know Brady would lead a comeback when they were booing him earlier in the game. They just knew he threw a terrible interception at a terrible time to throw an interception.

Oregon Held to 45 Points: The University of Washington was hosting Oregon, which has big-college football's best offense.

The Baylor Bears would like to argue this point.

Because at the NFL level, a one-point win has the same value as a 20-point win, you might think NFL coaches would always go all out for victory. But they don't. In the endgame at Seattle, underdog Tennessee took a short field goal rather than try for a touchdown, then didn't onside kick. Coach Mike Munchak was transparently assigning more importance to ensuring a close loss than trying all out for victory. With the Seahawks likely to make the playoffs, at year's end Munchak can say, "We went to Seattle and only lost by 7."

I hope Gregg really doesn't think NFL head coaches simply try to keep the margin their team loses by down so he can point out how close the game was after the season was over. If a coach loses a lot of games by seven points or less, then wouldn't the owner/GM rightly point out that head coach sure has a tough time winning close games? So even if Munchak brags the Titans only lost by seven points, it wouldn't be enough to save his job based on the fact the Titans lost a close game. After all, in a close game good coaching can make the difference in a win or loss.

Leading 19-17, Green Bay faced third-and-3 at Baltimore, 1:32 remaining, the hosts out of timeouts. Eddie Lacy ran wide for the first down -- then immediately "got on the ground," not trying to extend the play, because he knew the Packers could start kneeling. Smart move.

Doesn't Gregg mean "highly-drafted glory boy rookie from a football factory" Eddie Lacy made a smart move to kneel down? Oh that's right, Gregg won't mention Lacy is a second round pick and went to the University of Alabama because that doesn't fit his agenda that football factory schools only brainlessly churn out NFL talent and second round picks only care about their personal statistics and don't work hard for the team overall.

In the third overtime at Happy Valley, Michigan faced fourth-and-inches on the Penn State 16. Michigan's was the second possession, meaning a field goal wins the game. But the Michigan place-kicker had missed his previous two attempts. Going for the first down would raise the Wolverines' odds of victory via touchdown.

Just like a failed attempt on fourth down would have lowered the Wolverines' odds of victory. Not to mention, the Wolverines averaged 2.75 yards per carry during the game and their starting running back averaged 1.0 yard per carry during the game, so picking up the first down wasn't guaranteed. Plus, a college kicker should be able to hit a field goal on the Penn State 16 yard line.

In the fourth overtime, Penn State faced exactly the same choice, fourth-and-inches on the 16. Penn State ran for it, converted, and recorded the winning touchdown a few snaps later.

Perhaps Michigan should have run to get the first down, but I'm just saying getting a first down would raise the odds of victory, while not getting a first down would increase the odds of defeat. Gregg tries to prove his point by only assuming the Wolverines would have picked up the first down. The Wolverines weren't exactly running the football well during the game. A college kicker should be able to hit a field goal from the 16 yard line. It's not that I like the Wolverines decision here, but Gregg oversimplifies the decision by only focusing on what happens if the fourth down attempt works.

Single Worst Play of the Season -- So Far: Bad enough that Houston was self-destructing at home against the lower-echelon St. Louis Rams. Bad enough that Texans quarterbacks had thrown interceptions returned for touchdowns in four consecutive games, and were about to make it five. When at the end of the third quarter, backup T.J. Yates threw a pick-six to Alec Ogletree of the Rams -- Yates was the sole member of the Texans who tried to catch him.

Here is the video. Ogletree had a Rams player escorting him to the end zone. I get that maybe the Texans should have tried to catch him, but there was no way they were catching Ogletree. If you look at the video, no Texans player had an angle where they could have gotten Ogletree.

Ogletree is a linebacker. The Texans had speed merchants on the field, and rather than chase Ogletree, they stood around watching.

Ogletree ran a 4.7 40-yard dash at the Combine (I left off rounding to the hundredth of a decimal since I know Gregg hates hyper-specificity) and used to be a safety. The Texans may have had speed merchants, but unless they had a guy on the field who ran a 3.8 40-yard dash they weren't catching Ogletree once he had a 10 yard head start on them.

The 98-yard runback took 11 seconds, a long time by football standards, yet none of the Houston speed players chased Ogletree, who's all alone in every camera angle of play.

Right, it took 11 seconds to go 98 yards. Ogletree ran 8.9 yards every second and 2.45 40-yard dashes in covering the 98 yards. Ogletree essentially ran a little faster than a 4.7 40-yard dash in other words (around a 4.48 40-yard dash...which tells me Gregg's time of 11 seconds is wrong) if you take the 11 seconds it took him to run the distance divided by 2.45 40-yard dashes. So if Ogletree had a 10 yard head start on the Texans players then the Texans player would have to run 108 yards in the same time Ogletree ran 98 yards, which means the Texans player would have to run a 4.07 40-yard dash (approximately...if you take 108 yards divided by 40 to equal 2.7 40-yard dashes then divide the 11 seconds by this 2.7 40-yard dashes the Texans player would run) to catch up with Ogletree at the goal line. I'm not sure the Texans have a player that can run that fast. That Texans would have to run a 4.07 40-yard dash just to catch Ogletree at the goal line with a 10 yard head start. To tackle him before he scores the Texans player would have to run a sub-4.0 40-yard dash.

(My math makes sense to me and I'm only using Gregg's numbers. Either way, it was very hard for the Texans to catch Ogletree since he had a head start and had a Rams player escorting him to the end zone)

Next Week: Can the Texans make it six straight games throwing a pick-six?

More importantly, now that Gregg has complained Hollywood doesn't show people being woken up by their lover getting out of bed, Gregg will tackle the issue of why Hollywood never shows characters taking a crap? John McClane was running around New York all through "Die Hard with a Vengeance" while nursing a hangover and didn't once have to take a post-drinking poop? Very unrealistic.

5 comments Tim Keown Thinks the NCAA Should Pay for Johnny Manziel's Parking Ticket

I've sort of already made my feelings regarding Johnny Manziel's Twitter response upon receiving a parking ticket known, but I just had to cover this Tim Keown article. Of course after I write this, Johnny Manziel decides he is too hungover to attend the Manning Quarterback Camp, causing another controversy. Tim Keown isn't writing about that, but writing about Manziel's parking ticket issues. Tim in very serious fashion (just look at his picture, he's really fucking serious) confuses the issue of Manziel's parking ticket by explaining this wouldn't happen if Manziel could make money off his likeness. I guess that's his point. The main point about Manziel's Tweet should be about Manziel wanting to get out of College Station and his Tweeting "walk a mile in my shoes" as some sort of grab for sympathy over a parking ticket. It's not a big deal that he complains about wanting out of College Station, but his "mile in my shoes" Tweet (which Keown ever-so-conveniently doesn't even touch on) seems to be the big disconnect for me. The issue is not about Manziel Tweeting angrily, but about him attempting to gain sympathy for being well-known around the Texas A&M campus and becoming a celebrity. Tim Keown says Johnny Manziel wouldn't get a parking ticket if he got paid to play football. I guess that's his point. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't see how college athletes getting paid has anything to do with illegal parking. Talk about confusing the issue.

The Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M is quite a place. It's a testament to the nothing-is-too-good-for-our-kids philosophy of college architecture -- glass, stone and steel, with luxurious sitting rooms and restaurants and whatever else you might need to escape the infernal College Station heat.

Except you can get a parking ticket if you choose to park near the bookstore?

The most prominent clothing items are "No Heisman without the MAN" T-shirts and "Heisman Football" T-shirts and No. 2 jerseys and No. 2 T-shirts and No. 2 baseball caps. It's all very careful: no direct reference to Johnny Manziel

Well of course there's no reference to Manziel. These shirts and baseball caps aren't necessarily referring to Manziel. It could be referring to Marcus Gold or Earvin Taylor. Maybe Texas A&M just likes the number 2 because they think putting the number 1 on the back of a jersey is too presumptive and doesn't look as good on a T-shirt?

and no mention of "Johnny Football," the nickname Manziel has attempted to protect -- and eventually monetize -- through copyright.

Walk a day in Manziel's shoes, Tim Keown. Copyrighting a nickname isn't as easy as you think it is. You have to think of a nickname, fill out the patent form, then fill out the envelope while spelling "Alexandria, Virginia" correctly, make sure you sending it to the "US Patent and Trademark" headquarters and not the "US Patient Office," while also learning how exactly to mail a letter out. That's assuming you want to file the patent an easy way. If he wants to try the hard way and file the patent online, then Manziel has to figure out how to turn on this thing that looks like a television but his remote control won't work on it and when he approaches the computer all he sees are a bunch of numbers and letters on a long rectangular looking object that plugs into the DVR-looking object beside the television-looking object. It's just not as easy to file a patent as it initially seems. It's good to have bros who can help out when it comes to things like mailing letters and turning on a computer.

I walked through the bookstore on a quiet and hot June afternoon a couple of weeks ago, 

I like how Tim Keown appears to just randomly cruise around college campuses. "I was hanging around the quad at Auburn University recently, just watching some guys play Ultimate Frisbee..."

I thought about it again when I read the uproar over the ridiculously minuscule controversy regarding Manziel's ill-advised tweet after a parking ticket last weekend.

I admit it is a miniscule controversy. There's no doubt about that, but the topic is not so miniscule that Tim Keown can't write an entire column about it. The Tweet was really not a very big deal, other than it made people wonder why Manziel wanted to leave College Station. It became more annoying than anything, at least to me, when Manziel wanted us to "walk in his shoes."

The overriding perception of tremendous young athletes has always been confusing. A 19-year-old can design a T-shirt or a computer game that sells millions and we call him a prodigy, an entrepreneur. We celebrate his ingenuity and his wealth. But a 20-year-old whose college football jersey sells millions isn't entitled to that money,

No, Johnny Manziel can design a T-shirt or a computer game that would make millions and he is entitled to this money. He can't design a T-shirt that trades off his own image though, because that's a big no-no. Overall, I'm not sure at all what this has to do with a Tweet about a parking ticket, but I'm hanging in here hoping Tim Keown gets to the point.

But a 20-year-old whose college football jersey sells millions isn't entitled to that money, or to the money generated by his talent on game day. And if he points out the unfairness of this relationship in any way, he is labeled an ingrate for not understanding the value of his college education.

I think college athletes have more support than ever as it pertains to those people who understand the unfairness of this relationship. The problem, as always has been the problem, is that no one has a clue as to how to compensate these college athletes for the value they bring into their college through sports. It's a two-step process and we aren't even past the point where many feel comfortable giving college athletes compensation for playing college sports. Once that point is reached (if that point ever gets reached) it needs to be decided how to go about actually compensating these athletes fairly. Good luck with that.

Back to this article...it is a very tenuous relationship between Johnny Manziel Tweeting angrily about a parking ticket and Johnny Manziel getting paid to play football. I think Tim Keown really wanted to write an article about paying college athletes but just needed a way to slip into this discussion. Much like 75% of these sportswriters who write about paying college athletes, Keown has absolutely no suggestions as to how much Manziel should get paid, how it is decided which college athletes even get paid, and where the money to pay these athletes will come from. I would be angry over this, but it is common. I read a lot of snide comments about how college athletes should get paid, but don't find ideas on how to pay these athletes alongside these comments.

It simply doesn't matter that his school is probably selling enough individually branded gear -- however obtuse the presentation -- in a week to pay for his scholarship several times over.

And this has what to do with a parking ticket and Johnny Manziel's frustration upon receiving a parking ticket again?

For decades, the NCAA has done a remarkable job of public relations. The NCAA powers that be know we all look back fondly on the days when we were playing games, and that sentiment is a powerful influence when it comes to old guys deciding who should get what and who should just shut up about it already.

I'm not very smart. I don't get how Johnny Manziel getting a parking ticket and getting upset about it on Twitter has anything to do with Manziel being paid to play football. Even if he got paid to play quarterback, he would still have to pay the parking ticket, right? Or is part of his compensation from Texas A&M that he could park wherever he wants?

It's easy to draw a connecting line from the bookstore to the parking ticket to the tweet in which Manziel expresses his disgust for College Station and a desire to leave "whenever it may be."

It's actually really not that easy to do this. It's easy to draw a connecting line from Manziel getting a parking ticket to him Tweeting about a desire to leave College Station and then asking us to "walk a mile in my shoes" once he is surprised about the feedback he received on Twitter when he stated he can't wait to leave Texas A&M.

Without the Heisman and the adulation, of course, nobody would care. 

Absolutely true. No one would care about Manziel if he didn't receive all this adulation. Now the question is whether Manziel pursued this adulation and my opinion is that he absolutely did. He has made a great effort to be seen as a celebrity. He has Tweeted out pictures of money he won gambling, he posts pictures of him sitting courtside at NBA games, and he posts pictures of him with celebrities. Mark Ingram, Cam Newton, Robert Griffin, and Sam Bradford all managed to win a Heisman Trophy and they didn't receive quite the amount of adulation and fame outside of the fame that came with being a high-profile college football player. Robert Griffin by all accounts managed to take classes in the Baylor classroom with his fellow students, Cam Newton had controversy surrounding him at Auburn but he still found a way to not post pictures of himself with stacks of money, and Mark Ingram didn't need to Tweet out pictures of himself sitting courtside at NBA games.

It's nothing against Manziel and I in no way think he is in the wrong. It's just he has chased this celebrity that he has now achieved. Manziel is doing nothing wrong by enjoying his time in the spotlight, but he has also made it very clear he enjoys and will continue to pursue being in the spotlight. He can't just turn it on and off when it is convenient for him.

The idolatry creates something you can't just un-create.

Fine, but who created it? I have some sympathy for Manziel, but the bottom line is that Manziel helped to create the idolatry by creating a public persona which encourages this idolatry. He's a stupid, young college kid who knows he wants to be famous enough to take pictures with coeds and celebrities, but doesn't want to deal with all the negative attention this may bring.

Overreaction is part of the deal. Now, though, with social media providing an instant connection to the world, even the most insignificant complaints end up as headlines.

That's absolutely true. These insignificant complaints end up as headlines more often when the person making the complaint has put himself out in the public and has a large social media presence like Manziel has. I would fully expect Manziel to overreact and that's something he is entitled to do every once in a while, but his overreaction has more to do with him being 20 years old and less to do with him not being paid to play football.

If you felt you received a bogus parking ticket on campus 20 years ago and told your roommates, "I can't wait to get out of this place," they probably would have nodded and gone about their business.

That's probably true, but I also would have told my roommates this and not share this thought out with the entire world. I would fully know I am a public figure at the school I attend and could probably just go to public safety and explain the situation...assuming it was a bogus ticket.

Is Manziel immature? It seems like it. Should he, and every other high-profile athlete, be judicious about using social media to voice petty concerns? Definitely, if only to avoid having to explain his way out of something insignificant.

And again, notice how Keown carefully avoids the "woe is me" Tweet where Manziel encouraged us to "walk a mile in his shoes." He avoids this because he knows Manziel has brought a lot of this attention upon himself by trying really hard to have a public persona off the football field. Instead, Keown desperately tries to tie Manziel's parking ticket to the Texas A&M bookstore selling #2 jerseys.

But Manziel's momentary displeasure with his surroundings -- spurred, it must be noted, by his decision to park his Mercedes, which has windows tinted too darkly, pointing the wrong direction -- brings up an uncomfortable truth:

That uncomfortable truth being that Manziel clearly seemed to deserve this parking ticket?

You might get all misty-eyed when the band plays the alma mater after a big win, but these guys don't. Just because it was the best years of your life doesn't mean it's the best of theirs.

Hey, it's another straw-man argument. Tim Keown is saying Johnny Manziel's parking ticket rant on Twitter isn't a big deal (which it really isn't) because he doesn't get paid to play football and because Manziel doesn't care as much as Texas A&M fans do about the outcome of the football games.

That's the crux of the O'Bannon antitrust lawsuit, which aims to give current and former players a cut of media revenue and other merchandise -- A&M No. 2 jerseys, for example.

Oh, so Manziel doesn't care about Texas A&M, but he certainly wants to get his cut of revenue he is generating from the school he doesn't care about? I think I understand what Tim Keown is saying now. Actually, I don't understand. Keown has essentially indicated he thinks Manziel's parking ticket was well-earned, but then gets off on a tangent about Manziel getting paid to play football which seemingly has little to do with the parking ticket Manziel received nor Manziel's Twitter rant.

It raises a multitude of important questions, and here's one related to Manziel: If college athletes were paid, would a player such as Manziel -- a college hero with a questionable NFL future -- be more inclined to stay in school through four years of eligibility?

Some players would be more inclined to stay in school through four years of eligibility, but for college athletes that have a chance at being a successful pro athlete I'm not sure the aim should be to keep these players in college for all four years. It's preferred, but would Johnny Manziel rather earn $100,000 playing for Texas A&M or earn $1 million playing for an NFL team? It's not a hard decision for some college athletes.

Would the NCAA, in effect, become a short-term competitor for the NFL?

The NCAA is not intended to be a short-term competitor for the NFL. It's intended to be a collegiate sports system where amateur athletes can earn an education while playing sports. Obviously the NCAA doesn't always succeed in this area, but the NCAA is not set up to be a competitor to the NFL nor should it be set up that way.

Good. From the botched Miami investigation to the unfair transfer rules to the outrageous coach salaries, serious tectonic movement is a hell of an idea. It's a concept we should all embrace.

And of course like any good backseat driver Tim Keown has no idea how this concept should be initiated nor does have any good ideas, but he just knows how things work now isn't working.

Big Ten president Jim Delany says it wouldn't be out of the question for the conference to adopt a Division III, nonscholarship model if college players gain financial control over their likeness and performance.

It feels like an outrageous suggestion -- mostly because it is -- but there's another way to look at it:

Is the other way to look at it that this has nothing to do with a parking ticket Johnny Manziel received in 2013?

If the lawsuit goes forward, and the players win, there might be no need for scholarships.

And of course athletes would never again get another parking ticket.

One thing is for sure: Judging by the clothes hanging in the A&M bookstore, Johnny Manziel wouldn't need one.

This article had nothing to do with the parking ticket that Johnny Manziel received. Why is Manziel so popular and why wouldn't he need a scholarship (which by the way, Manziel's parents seem to be pretty wealthy so I'm not sure he needs a scholarship to Texas A&M, which seems to cost about $4600 per semester for in-state tuition)? Possibly because Manziel has done an excellent job of taking his on-field persona and translated it to an off-the-field persona, which is why I don't feel bad for him when he wants me to take a walk in his shoes.

4 comments Quick Update

I usually try to post something 4-5 times per week on this blog. Over the past few months it has been a lot closer to four times per week, which doesn't make me happy. Unfortunately personal stuff, having a full-time job, and lack of bad sportswriting have caused me to not be able to write as much as I would like. There are times I have the time and the material to post 5-6 times per week and then there are times I struggle to get four posts. When I am searching for articles to write about for 2-3 hours like I did one day recently it becomes more of a chore than anything and I like to avoid that. Life was easier when I could count on bad sportswriting just hanging out there, but I've lost Jay Mariotti, Joe Morgan, Hat Guy (R.I.P.) and Murray Chass has even seemed to smarten up more of late. So my writing here is completely dependent on having time and having material. It annoys me, but that's the reality of it all.

There are times like that when I get busy at work or there just isn't anything to write about that I think "Screw it all, I'm shutting this thing down if I can't find good stuff to write about." I tend to be a bit dramatic when I can't find good material or don't have time to write. In response to having less time and material to write about, one would think I would push back on the throttle a bit and cut down the amount I post. One would think wrong. I like to write about other things outside of sports, so I decided I was going to start a personal blog where I wrote about everything else. It's not a diary or anything like that. It also won't replace what I write here and I don't plan on cutting back here. There are times I feel like deconstructing things other than sportswriting, so that's the purpose of my new personal blog.

The new blog is called A Little Bit of Everything for two reasons.

1. I am not creative when it comes to titles.

2. I plan on posting a little bit of everything. I will probably deconstruct movies, music, possibly politics or anything else that pops into my mind. It's a scary thought.

I explain better on A Little Bit of Everything why I created a new blog rather than just write other stuff about a non-sports-related topic here. I'm not turning into Bill Simmons and trying to become a pop culture expert nor am I encouraging anyone to read my personal blog if you don't give a shit about my personal blog. I hope it will be interesting to read, but different strokes for everyone is how the world goes. I don't pretend to be more interesting than anyone else in the world. I do want to emphasize it won't just be writing about me, but a variety of topics that just aren't sports-related.

So I will have an introductory post up on the new site very soon if you care to visit and then I have no idea how often I will post. I have a few things in mind to post already, but as I said before, this blog is my first priority.

So in summary, I found I didn't have as much time to write lately and responded by deciding to write even more and start a second blog. It doesn't make sense to me either, but I'm hoping to make it work. TMQ is back this week and I am working on a mock draft that will undoubtedly be really, really wrong, but hopefully fun to comment upon. I'm going to stop rambling and get back to that.

4 comments Bill Simmons Waits Until He Has Something to Whine About Before Writing His First Red Sox Column of This Season Part 2

Yesterday I posted the longer-than-expected post on Bill Simmons' brief return to writing about the Boston Red Sox. "Writing" is probably not the correct term to use. He was really trying to elicit sympathy from his readers because his favorite baseball team is having a bad year and he seemed to want to elicit this sympathy through being a little whiny. Because I hate you all, I have broken this column into two parts. So here is the second part of that Simmons-Red Sox cry-fest.

Not long ago, the Red Sox organization ranked among the most thoughtful in baseball. Epstein played the market's inefficiencies just about perfectly in 2003 and 2004 (power/OBP bargains mixed with expensive, sure-thing pitchers), then created a long-term strategy: We're avoiding mammoth contracts for free agents hitting their 30s; we're using much of our financial advantage to outspend competitors on draft picks, scouting and foreign-born prospects; and hopefully, we're "growing" our own potential stars and either locking them up to long-term deals or flipping them for elite players. I loved this plan. Everybody did.

Bill didn't love this plan, he loved the fact this plan worked. Bill also liked the plan from the late 2000's where the Red Sox acquired the best possible players on the free agent market, he just doesn't like it now that this plan didn't work.

So what changed? Everyone else in baseball started emulating what the smarter teams were doing (Boston, Oakland, etc.), leaving Theo without any real market inefficiencies to exploit other than defense (they tried, with limited success) and this one: He could simply outspend 95 percent of the league.

So it isn't Theo Epstein's fault the Red Sox started throwing money at expensive free agents. That's how the market forced him to behave. After every other team started copying the Red Sox (and of course, to a lesser extent Oakland) Theo had no choice but to abandon his plan not to spend on free agents. That's what Bill wants us to believe.

Of course, this half-assed theory about what changed doesn't answer the biggest question I have...why didn't Theo keep using the financial advantage that Bill states the Red Sox had over other teams in order to,

outspend competitors on draft picks, scouting and foreign-born prospects; and hopefully, we're "growing" our own potential stars and either locking them up to long-term deals or flipping them for elite players.

This was still possible. Regardless of whether the rest of the league had caught up to market inadequacies the Red Sox still had the financial advantage over nearly every other major league team. The Red Sox could outspend on draft picks, still scout foreign-prospects and grow potential stars or flip these potential stars for elite players through trade. This did not have to change because the Red Sox could use their financial advantage to outspend on draft picks and scout foreign-born prospects. I hope Bill realizes this didn't have to change. The fact other teams caught up with the market inadequacies would not have prevented the Red Sox from sticking to this part of the plan.

What Bill Simmons is really doing is (surprise, surprise) making shit up in order to make it seem like Theo Epstein and Red Sox ownership had no choice but to sign expensive free agents when this couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, other teams caught on to market inadequacies and found players who may not seem to fit the bill as a major league talent, but truly were a major league talent. The fact other teams caught up with this market inadequacy doesn't preclude the Red Sox from using the other market inadequacies, namely playing for a high-profile team (the Red Sox) and being able to offer more money, to continue building a winning team.

In fact, the Red Sox built this current team using the exact plan Bill claims the Red Sox got away from. They signed Daisuke Matsuzaka from Japan and traded some of their prospects for elite players. Bill is so ignorant about baseball and even his own Red Sox team (in some ways) it amazes me. He outlines a plan Theo Epstein followed that led to success (that Bill and everyone loved), then claims the Red Sox got away from it. Did they get away from it completely though? Isn't part of this plan Bill claims Theo got away from a similar plan to how the 2012 Red Sox team was built? Yes, the Red Sox didn't stay away from expensive free agents, but otherwise the plan stayed intact in some ways.

Remember that asshole Josh Beckett? The same Josh Beckett that Bill Simmons is so thankful he didn't name his child after? How did the Red Sox acquire him? They traded Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez for him. The Red Sox traded their top prospects for elite players, just like the masterplan that was supposed to work (and Bill loved) said to do.

Remember Adrian Gonzalez? How did the Red Sox acquire him? They traded Casey Kelly and Anthony Rizzo for him. The Red Sox, again, traded top prospects in order to acquire an elite player. This is part of what the masterplan that was supposed to work (and Bill loved) said to do.

Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Jon Lester, Kevin Youkilis, and Clay Buchholz? All homegrown players.

My point is the Red Sox didn't get entirely away from the plan Bill is claiming they got away from because they could no longer exploit market inadequacies. This plan just didn't work. Sometimes a plan is good, but the execution fails. Sure, the Red Sox signed expensive free agents. That's the part of the plan that was deviated from, but otherwise the plan stayed intact. It just didn't work for the 2012 season. Bill is always trying to push a theory on his readers when this season's struggles can simply be explained by a bad season. In Bill's mind the Red Sox can't just have a bad season, there has to be an underlying reason or he has to create a reason to explain what happened.

So this plan, the same one everyone loved, was still being used in some ways by the Red Sox. It just didn't work for the 2012 season. The idea other teams caught up to the Red Sox and affected this plan is simply bullshit. The Red Sox still could have executed the plan by using their financial advantage and hoping the personnel moves they made worked out.

The Red Sox splurged heavily on their minor league system, using their money to sway tough-to-sign picks and highly regarded foreign players.

Which is exactly what Theo Epstein's plan called for them to do. Bill seems to be criticizing this move, which I think he should not do.

They overpaid for J.D. Drew, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Lackey, Beckett and Crawford. They tried to overpay Mark Teixeira. They paid veterans market value to stick around. They paid, they paid and they paid.

And Bill liked it, liked it, liked it when the Red Sox did this. Wasn't part of the plan that Bill liked where the Red Sox would go out and acquire foreign talent or trade prospects for elite players? That's how the Red Sox acquired Daisuke and Josh Beckett. I'm sure it made him a little nervous to sign these players but Bill didn't want to see Crawford/Matsuzaka/Lackey go to the Yankees or another team did he? Not when they filled a need the Red Sox had. Beckett had pitched well for the Red Sox, why would the Red Sox not re-sign him after trading for him? Were the Red Sox really going to let Beckett go after his 2007 and 2009 season? The Red Sox fans would have revolted at the thought of letting Beckett go. Don't let Bill tell you differently and revise history to make himself seem smarter.

Maybe he knew going from a now-spoiled, relentlessly passionate fan base that expected 100 wins and a World Series appearance every season and cared a little too much to an emotionally scarred fan base with comically low expectations was a safer move.

Bill is talking about Theo Epstein here. Red Sox fans are too passionate and care a little bit too much. Bill even manages to make the negatives seem like positives, like he is at a job interview, reinforcing the super-specialness of the Red Sox in his own mind.

"A negative about me? Sometimes I am a little too-detail oriented."

I'd be about 100 times more skeptical if they hadn't just pulled off that hijacking of a Dodgers trade — somehow convincing them to assume Crawford and Beckett as a Gonzalez trade tax while forking over two highly regarded pitching prospects. This seemed utterly and totally improbable as recently as early Friday afternoon,

Throughout this whole column, Bill sometimes glosses over the fact the Red Sox were able to get rid of expensive, long-term contracts while getting two of the Dodgers top prospects in return for these players. They managed to dip themselves in shit and then come out completely clean by trading $250+ million in contracts when every single contract traded away was in the first or second year of that contract. Bill sometimes glosses over this because he calls the Los Angeles Lakers during his NBA columns, but wants his readers to ignore how incredibly fucking lucky it was for the Red Sox to pull this off. It's not an equal comparison, but this trade was twice as lucky as the Grizzlies handing Gasol to the Lakers on a silver platter or waiting it out until they got Howard. This Red Sox-Dodgers trade got rid of payroll and gave the Red Sox a chance to rebuild with elite prospects. You know Bill is self-conscious about the Red Sox being considered lucky to be bailed out by the Dodgers and is afraid it will be brought up by his readers whenever he does his weekly whining about how lucky the Lakers are.

It was a great job by Ben Cherington and he managed to unload salary and get top prospects back in one trade. There is nothing to complain about if you are a Red Sox fan. How did he even do that? Who cares if the Red Sox got lucky? Well, Bill does because he would have a heart attack if the Yankees managed to pull a trade off like this and we all know his previous comments about how lucky the Lakers are.

I never imagined Crawford's contract (five years remaining, $102.5 million) was tradable because of reasons like, "He clearly lost the ability to play baseball at a high level," "His body is breaking down in multiple places," "In a best-case scenario, you probably have to platoon him" and, "Oh, he just had Tommy John surgery THIS WEEK." Somehow, none of this deterred the Dodgers, who were so desperate to acquire Gonzalez (who started out slowly before returning to Rake Mode these past few weeks) that they probably looked at the big picture and thought …

Notice again, how Bill slips in there that Crawford returned to Rake Mode over the last few weeks, as if Crawford didn't just have Tommy John surgery and isn't due four more years at $80+ million on his contract. Bill is terrified readers will email him and mock him for every time he wrote about how the Lakers have gotten lucky in acquiring the players they have acquired. At least that's my theory.

You can't say enough about this trade from Boston's perspective: In the span of 24 hours, we went from "How the hell are we ever going to be good again?" to "Wait, there's a chance we're going to be good again!"

Good for you. Everyone loves it when a large-market team spends a ton of money on free agents who underperform and then that team gets their ass bailed out by another large-market team who can't seem to take on enough payroll. Gosh, we are so happy for Bill and would feel even better for him if he had not spent the previous 75% of this column needlessly beating the corpse of the 2012 Red Sox team.

Here's the irony: More often than not, big-market teams make the fatal mistake of thinking, We have to do something to get our fans excited!

I would agree with this, even though it isn't ironic. More often than not, fans of big-market teams get upset when their team doesn't spend enough money on free agents. A guy like Mark Teixeira hits the free agent market and fans of large-market teams want their team to go after this guy. Sure, the front office doesn't have to do this, but as Bill said earlier in the column,

After all, you are in a relationship with your favorite teams, right? We purchase tickets and merchandise; they purchase the players. We agree to remain loyal; they agree not to defecate on that loyalty.

Teams that can afford not to defecate on that loyalty go make a move to get fans excited for the season and hopefully improve the team. Imagine if the Red Sox don't go after a guy like John Lackey and then sign a pitcher like Kevin Correia to fill that rotation spot. How would the Red Sox fans feel? What if Carl Crawford is available in free agency and the Yankees make no move to sign him and end up platooning Andruw Jones and Eric Hinske out in left field all season? Fans would wonder why the hell the Yankees, who can afford to sign Crawford, just don't do it. So I do blame the organization, but fans also have expectations, regardless of whether they are fair or unfair expectations.

But you know what's more amazing? That these teams haven't realized how smart WE are. In 2012, fans are embarrassingly sophisticated about their favorite teams...For any big-market team to think, We have to do something to get our fans excited! in 2012 is legitimately, categorically insane.

Again, I would agree with this. Once Bill moves his point of view away from beating the corpse of the Red Sox and reminding us how lucky they were to get out from under these large contracts and get prospects in return, he is making a few good points.

You know what gets us excited? Shrewd, logical moves. Patience over recklessness.

I disagree in some ways. What gets fans excited is when a team makes a big move and adds a big, important piece to their team. Drafting well and signing a mid-market free agent who is a good platoon candidate is a shrewd, logical move, but these moves don't always excite fans. Smart fans get excited, that's true, but splashy moves can get an entire fan base excited.

When the Lakers finally landed Dwight Howard a few weeks ago, what made it special wasn't the move itself — a big-market team swallowing up yet another superstar — but the unflappable patience they exhibited for months and months leading up to that specific moment. I hate the Lakers with every fiber of my being. And you know what? I respect the hell out of them, too. They're a really smart franchise that always puts thought into their moves.

In six months Bill will be talking yet again how lucky the Lakers got in landing Howard. He may even throw a "6 for 24" joke in there as well just to thrash that unfunny joke to death one more time.

I thought the Red Sox were like that once upon a time. We won twice in four years. Somewhere along the line, we lost our way. I don't know if we found it. Time will tell. I just know that I'm interested again.

Now that Bill can whine about how bad things in Red Sox Land are, Bill is interested in following baseball again. Bill thrives on misery. I feel terrible for Red Sox fans this man represents your team in the minds of many people.

Last thought: It's strange to think how many Red Sox fans bought Gonzalez jerseys these past two years (and now they're stuck with them), or how many Red Sox fans out there did name their son "Beckett." That's another thing this trade banged home: As Jerry Seinfeld once warned us, we're rooting for laundry.

(looks away introspectively)

Don't get me wrong — I want to live in a world in which we could name our children after our favorite athletes without worrying about the consequences. I just don't think it exists.

Deep. Athletes and teams aren't loyal and fans are irresponsible for expecting players and teams to be loyal. These are new facts we've never been presented with before.

I guess the fact Bill is interested in the Red Sox again means we will get more than one column per summer in the future, followed by an eventual Red Sox World Series victory, followed by a book about the World Series victory written by Bill, followed by the Red Sox signing Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander, followed by a few years of the Red Sox going down "the wrong path" when Bill doesn't write about the Red Sox as much, followed by Bill writing a column saying he knew three years ago the Red Sox never should have signed Bryce Harper and Verlander, and finally he will be interested again in the Red Sox again when he can soak in their misery. Lather, rinse, repeat.

10 comments Bill Simmons Waits Until He Has Something to Whine About Before Writing His First Red Sox Column of This Season Part 1

Bill Simmons doesn't write about the Red Sox anymore. I don't know why. I can guess why. They aren't winning or competing for World Series titles over the past couple of years, so Bill doesn't seem to have as much of a need to write about them. Plus he has this insatiable need to be an NBA GM, so he writes about the NBA in the hopes of landing a GM gig. So far this season we have gotten a mailbag about Fenway Park and he has exchanged emails with a knowledgeable Red Sox fan. That's it though when it comes to the Red Sox. Otherwise, it has been a summer of NBA and Olympics talk. Now that the Red Sox have traded away Adrian Gonzalez and dumped Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford's salary on the Dodgers, Bill finds a way to review the bad direction the Red Sox were taking and tries to elicit sympathy (as usual) from his readers for a large market team that wasted millions of dollars. In typical Bill Simmons fashion he finds everything the Red Sox fans have suffered through to be exclusive to the Red Sox. Bill even uses the championships the professional teams from Massachusetts have won over the last decade of further proof of just how bad Red Sox fans have it. He tries to point out how great and bad Boston-area fans have it. He's insufferable and I feel sorry for Red Sox fans that he is your unofficial spokesman.

I wanted to name our newborn son "Beckett" right after the Red Sox won the 2007 World Series. If not for a reader intervening, my son might be named Beckett Simmons right now. We could start there.

Naming your child after an athlete who has been with your favorite team for less than five years and choosing that child's name simply because it is the last name of said athlete is always a bad idea. In fact, if you as a sports fan choose to name your child after an athlete and only choose that name because it is the athlete's name as well, then you probably deserve to be embarrassed five years later when that athlete becomes a punchline. This person would deserve at the very least to feel like an asshole every time he calls that child's name for the next 30-40 years.

The Red Sox have trotted out eight "superstar" hitters in my lifetime: Carl Yastrzemski, Fred Lynn, Jim Rice, Mo Vaughn, Nomar Garciaparra, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and Adrian Gonzalez. The first seven guys played a combined 83 seasons in Boston. Gonzalez lasted 21 months. We could start there.

"We're so cursed because we have only had eight superstar hitters over the last forty years, three of them probably/did use PEDs and one of those players didn't even stay for a full two years. We're so cursed! I need sympathy!"

I can't help but wonder what would happen if Bill cheered for a smaller market team who couldn't afford to keep their talent around. What if he was a Milwaukee Brewers fan? How annoying would he be at that point? Given the massive amount of navel-gazing and "woe is me" crap we get from him concerning the Red Sox, who are one of the most successful MLB teams over the last decade, I am guessing Bill would be whatever is worse than insufferable if he cheered for a small market team. If I were Bill Simmons, I would make a theory of insufferability based on bands who are insufferable. If Bill is at "Coldplay" level of insufferability as a Red Sox fan, he would be at "Maroon Five" level of insufferability if he were a Brewers fan.

My favorite baseball team just traded its best offensive player and a proven playoff starter

You will notice throughout this column how Josh Beckett vacillates between a no-good piece of shit overweight pitcher and a proven playoff starter depending on what Bill Simmons is trying to prove. In this situation, Bill wants sympathy so Beckett is labeled a proven playoff starter who Bill almost named his son after and not the overpaid useless pitcher who helped to destroy the Red Sox team and made Bill glad he didn't name is son after him. I have to give Bill credit, it is hard to gain sympathy for your team trading Beckett, while also bashing your team (in retrospect of course) for even having Beckett on the roster. To achieve this balance, Bill has to bend the truth a little bit.

in a massive salary dump that had no correlation to anything that's ever happened in Red Sox history except for … you know … the time we sold Babe Ruth.

Grow a pair of fucking balls. That happened 100 years ago.

Somehow, Red Sox fans are delighted about the trade. We could start there.

Yes, "somehow" Red Sox fans are delighted about the trade. Somehow Bill says Red Sox fans are happy and then spends the rest of this column describing how this trade is a good thing for the long-term prospects of the Red Sox. Yet again, he wants your sympathy for the Red Sox essentially giving up on the season, while glossing over the fact this is a great deal for the Red Sox.

The current Red Sox owners brought us our first championship since 1918 and a second title three years later. Since last October, they've replaced the most successful Red Sox manager in 90 years with the least-liked Red Sox manager of my lifetime not named "Grady Little." They've allowed the franchise's most successful general manager ever to break his contract without getting anything decent for him. They've assembled one of the league's three most expensive rosters, failed miserably, then lucked out when the Dodgers miraculously handed them a RESET button.

"Oh pity me! My team has won two World Series titles in the past ten years and the owners haven't made it three titles in the past ten years or maybe even eleven titles in the past ten years. The owners spent a shit-ton of money on players to make the fans happy and it didn't work out. How cursed are we? Our owners actively attempt to make the Red Sox team better than it was the year before, even if they are a bit misguided in their efforts, but this is a bad thing. I need sympathy!"

Quit whining. Bill gives Red Sox fans such a bad name. Try being a Cubs fan. Try being an Astros fan. Try being a Pirates fan. The last time the Pirates made the playoffs Barry Bonds was skinny before he got fat before he got skinny again. Every baseball fan hates his team at a certain point. My favorite team is run by a soulless corporation. They don't give a shit about what the team's record was last year or if there is a missing piece that would put the team over the top in the NL East. If it doesn't fit the budget, it doesn't fit the team. At least the Red Sox owners are trying to put a team on the field to win games and ignoring how they could make mistakes along the way. Every losing season isn't a disaster of epic proportions.

And now, headed for the worst Red Sox season in 20 solid years but blessed with financial flexibility again, these owners expect fans to (a) pretend the past two years never happened, and (b) trust their big-picture judgment again. We could start there.

The Red Sox owners have won two World Series in the last decade. We could start there. We could start at the part where Bill wrote an entire book saying he can die in peace and now only five years after the last World Series victory Bill doesn't trust the Red Sox owners anymore. We could start there.

After all, you are in a relationship with your favorite teams, right? We purchase tickets and merchandise; they purchase the players. We agree to remain loyal; they agree not to defecate on that loyalty.

This is where Bill is wrong. Not every team agrees not to defecate on that loyalty by actively putting together a great roster. Some teams try harder than others to put a good team together. The Marlins basically put together a roster for half a season in order to sell tickets to the new stadium, saw it wasn't working out immediately and then said "fuck it" and began yet another sale of players. The Astros aren't even trying at this point. The Padres are stuck with a small budget and basically are telling fans that this is as good as it is going to get for right now. The Nationals were going to suck for a few more years (you can't convince me this isn't true. They even resorted to the whole "we paid a lot of money for a player in free agency" tactic) until managed to stumble on the best pitcher and second-best hitter to come out of the draft in the past five years. Smart teams combine spending money with great player development. The Red Sox didn't want to be the Yankees so badly they have spent the past five years turning into the Yankees.

And it goes from there. The best-case scenario for any season? Winning the title. The worst-case scenario? Hate-watching your team while rooting for things to bottom out in a comically dreadful way just so you can remain entertained.

What Bill unsurprisingly fails to see is the best case scenario isn't even in play for some teams. He's fortunate in that this isn't true for the Red Sox because ownership will spend money on player development and free agents. Bill sees an even playing field where every year there is a best case and a worst case scenario that he just described. For certain teams this is possible, but for teams like the Blue Jays, Pirates, Orioles (and yes, I am including this year), Padres, Diamondbacks, Brewers, and a few other teams a solid run at the World Series is the best they can hope for. They aren't able to go into each season knowing their team will have a shot at making a run to the World Series.

By the way, I picked the Diamondbacks in the World Series this year. Do you know why? I'm a fucking idiot. For every year I put the Packers in the Super Bowl, I do something stupid like pick the Diamondbacks to make the World Series.

And look, I get it — listening to Boston fans bitch about sports is like listening to John Mayer bitch about his love life.

But Bill doesn't get it because he is writing this column. This is the whole "I won't be the person to complain" type of writing, which is normally followed by some complaining. So no, Bill doesn't get it. He defaults to what he knows best when discussing the Red Sox, which is whining.

We won seven titles in 10 years. Over that same time, we endured five of the most brutal playoff defeats in Boston sports history (the Aaron Boone Game, Super Bowl XLII, Super Bowl XLVI, the 2006 AFC championship game and Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals),

And now begins the whining. What entitled sports fan Bill fails to see is that these are five separate playoff appearances where the Boston sports fans endured brutal defeats. So Boston teams won seven titles in 10 years and had five other brutal losses in the playoffs. While Bill feels sympathy for himself and can't get past his entitled only-child syndrome to realize this is stupid, everyone else is wondering how they can get their favorite teams to make the playoffs on a consistent enough basis to suffer five brutal playoff defeats. Nobody wants to lose a tough playoff game, but it shows how successful Boston-area teams have been...yet Bill continuously whines and whines about how bad he has it as a fan of these teams.

Bill is just being a drama queen. Any loss in the Super Bowl or a Game 7 is brutal, so it isn't like Boston-area teams have a monopoly of tough losses over the last ten years. The enormous amount of entitlement shocks me. Well, it shouldn't shock me, Bill has written this way for years. Bill is using the fact his favorite teams were so successful over the last ten years as a negative and trying to act like Boston-area teams have suffered more difficult defeats over the last ten years (which again, any Super Bowl or Game 7 loss is tough), which really only speaks to the success of these Boston teams over the last ten years.

and trust me, Game 7 of the 2008 ALCS and Game 6 of the 2012 Heat-Celtics series weren't exactly a barrel of laughs. I can't imagine any fan base has experienced more extreme highs and lows over a 10-year span.

You are super-special, Bill! Is that what you want to hear? You aren't though. Every fan base has highs and lows over a 10-year span.

Bill should try to be a fan of teams who haven't experienced any extreme highs over the last ten years. How about him becoming a fan of Cleveland-area teams? Their extreme highs consist of getting far enough in the playoffs to experience an extreme low.

Nobody was more overdue for a hatefully expensive, totally unredeeming, insane clusterfuck of a season more than Red Sox fans. We knew it, too. We could handle a lousy season. It happens.

That's thing though. Bill can't handle a losing season. This column is what happens when a losing season occurs. There is a bunch of navel-gazing and gnashing of teeth about the future.

But something deeper was happening here. The Red Sox had morphed into something else.

Bill could handle the Red Sox having a losing season, but that's not what was happening here. What was happening here, was something so big and unexpected that it was deeper than the Red Sox having a losing season. Bill can't just simply let the Red Sox have a bad season. There has to be an underlying reason exclusive to the Red Sox as to why they are having a bad season.

So after stating he could handle a losing season, Bill claims this wasn't a losing season but was something much bigger than a losing season, thereby providing a narrative about how a Red Sox losing season is much bigger than a losing season other teams have. For some reason, Boston Celtics/Red Sox/Bruins and New England Patriots fans haven't hung Bill in effigy yet. He's probably 50% of the reason they get such a bad rap.

Once upon a time, the phrase "Red Sox fan" carried clear responsibilities and implications.

Oh for God's sake, stop writing this crap. It's tripe.

You loved something that, ultimately, was going to break your heart. You pined for a World Series title that was never going to happen.

Except the World Series victory has now happened, so shut the hell up about it. This is Bill's default setting when it comes to writing. He whines. What happened is called "the entrance of bandwagon fans" and every fan base has them. I know this disappoints Bill to no end, but hangers-on started calling themselves Red Sox fans. Success, the same success Bill craved so much and for some reason he doesn't believe the Red Sox ever achieved, changed the makeup of the fan base.

You watched family members pass away without ever seeing the Red Sox win a title. You wondered if it was cruel to saddle your children with this franchise, whether you should "save" them by nudging them in a different direction.

Yes, but that is the past and the present is happening now. Let go of the past and embrace the future. I know it is hard for Bill to do considering how much mileage (and money) he has gotten from constantly harping on the past.

And then everything turned. We won the World Series, shed the curse, buried some demons, moved on with our lives.

Moved on with your lives, huh? You can tell by this column Bill has completely moved on.

Maybe Bill was saying he doesn't pay attention to baseball anymore and has moved on from the sport. That would be more accurate.

Well, here's what happened. We started spending money like the Yankees.

Apparently signing Manny Ramirez to an 8 year $160 million deal in 2000, J.D. Drew $70 million in 2007 and giving Curt Schilling $12 million in 2004 were just under-the-radar signings.

The Red Sox won the World Series in 2007 with five guys who made $10 million or more and the team had the second-highest payroll in the majors at $143 million. The Red Sox had a payroll of $127 million in 2004, which was the second-highest payroll in the majors. Don't give me this crap about how the Red Sox started down a bad path by spending money like the Yankees. The Red Sox just didn't get the results they wanted by spending like the Yankees from 2008 until 2012. No team could match the Yankees when it came to spending, but the Red Sox were the closest team in the majors to spending like the Yankees spent even when they won their two World Series titles. The 2004 Red Sox "little team that could" was well-funded. I'm not taking anything away from them or knocking them. Bill's revisionist history doesn't sit well with me though. Don't give me this crap about how the Red Sox started spending like the Yankees. Compared to other MLB teams in 2004, the Red Sox were the Yankees.

The owners relentlessly pimped the Red Sox brand inside the stadium, on their website, on their 24-hour TV channel, on your street, in your house, on your forehead and everywhere else you could imagine (leading to a general dumbing down of the fan base

Of course Bill Simmons, the most popular columnist on the most popular sports site, relentlessly pimped the Red Sox as well by writing column after column about their run to the World Series title. Bill then pimped an entire book about this experience and I'm pretty sure he made a few bucks off that. Of course the most popular columnist on the most popular sports site could NEVER be responsible for the dumbing down of the fan base could he? I would submit Bill is one of the most high profile Red Sox fans in the United States, or at least in sports journalism. He wrote column after column about the Red Sox and made money off a book he wrote about the Red Sox. He tied everything back in to the Red Sox in his columns. Yeah, it's everyone else's fault for pimping the Red Sox brand though.

only we looked the other way because they kept funneling so much of their profits back into the team.

Which is what Bill will do again in five years. He's look the other way again when the Red Sox start winning again. I love the passing of the blame to the Red Sox owners. Granted, they share a lot of blame, but Bill had quite a time during the mid-2000's peddling Red Sox nostalgia and curse-discussion which led to an increased focus on the Red Sox and their hunt for a World Series title. He got a lot of fame and money from this peddling, but he would never blame himself would he? How could one of the most influential columnists in the United States, who just so happens to be a Red Sox fan, have any influence on that team's fan base?

Nobody really cared until the Red Sox finished the biggest September swoon in baseball history —

Everyone started freaking out at the idea the Red Sox aren't automatically penciled into the playoffs every single year. This realization must have really thrown Bill and his entitled attitude for a loop.

When Theo Epstein fled a few weeks later, for the first time, Red Sox fans started examining these last eight years the same way you look at a massive dinner check. You know when you go out with a bunch of friends, order food and drinks for three hours, never worry about anything, and then there's that moment when the check comes and everyone's passing it around in disbelief? That's for us? Did you think it was going to be that high?

Or as normal writers who have the capability to actually write concise, readable material might say,

"When Theo Epstein fled a few weeks later, for the first time, Red Sox fans started examining these last eight years and realized when expensive players don't produce it creates a bloated payroll and reduces roster flexibility."

The fan bases for other teams despised us just as much. We had the same "If you don't win the title, you've totally failed" conundrum staring at us every spring.

"We are cursed with such unjustifiable high standards for our team because we carry an entitled attitude about our team's inherent superiority. Feel sympathy for us."

Wasn't that the Red Sox? What were we building? What's fun about rooting for a team of staggeringly overpaid players who were collected with little rhyme or reason?

I don't know, it sure sounds like the Red Sox had a lot of fun making the playoffs and knowing they could be in the running for the best free agent hitter or pitcher during every offseason. I don't recall Bill complaining the Red Sox shouldn't sign John Lackey or predicting that Josh Beckett wasn't worth re-signing over 4 years at $68 million for 2011-2014. So obviously there was a lot of fun had by all. Bill is throwing this whole "It wasn't very much fun to cheer for these guys" bullshit when he seemed perfectly happy playing the game at the time.

Throw in the team's general unlikability (especially Beckett, who regarded the fans and media with real contempt) and for the first time I can remember, Red Sox fans were hate-watching games much like you'd hate-watch Teen Mom or something.

We haven't had many forced pop culture references. I'm glad Bill made up for this by throwing a "Teen Mom" reference in.

Well, who wants to spend three-plus hours a day hate-watching something? If you wanted to enjoy a Red Sox game in 2012, you had to get stoned, break out the 2004 and 2007 DVDs, put in one of the most exciting games and pretend it was happening in real time.

Or you could just deal with the fact nearly every team can have a bad season.

But here was the worst part … there was no way out!!!! Adrian Gonzalez had six years and $127 million remaining on his deal. Carl Crawford had five years and $102.5 million remaining. John Lackey had three years, $45.75 million.

And yet again, when the Red Sox traded for Adrian Gonzalez and gave him a large new contract where was Bill Simmons at complaining about this? Bill was popping champagne corks and celebrating one of the best hitters in baseball was joining his favorite baseball team. There's a line from "The Sopranos" that reminds me of Bill Simmons. It is spoken by Tony Soprano's wife (Carmela) and it is said when Tony wants Carmela to sympathize with Tony's mistress who tried to kill herself after Tony broke up with her. Carmela says,

"You are putting me in a position where I am feeling sorry for a whore who fucks you?"

That's how I feel in this situation. Bill is putting his readers in a position where we are supposed to feel sorry for a large market team that has spent recklessly and didn't get a return on their investment? I can't do it and I don't see how his readers can. Well, I can see how his SimmonsClones readers can. They worship the very ground Bill Simmons hovers above.

(On a side note, I did an Internet search for "Carmela whore who fucks you" while at work like a moron. If you see my resume posted on this blog in a couple of days, you will know why.)

According to this list, four teams spent between $150 million and $200 million (Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Angels), five teams spent between $100 million and $149 million (Tigers, Rangers, Marlins, Giants, Cardinals), then 14 teams spent between $75 million and $99 million. That means the Red Sox, having totally squandered their spending advantage thanks to those four deals, needed to outmaneuver everyone else in 2013 and 2014 just to regain any semblance of a competitive advantage again.

Oh my God, if the Red Sox are unable to ever have a competitive advantage again then how will Bill continue to go on with life? He can't simply cheer for the Red Sox. He has to cheer for them fully knowing they have a competitive advantage over the other major league teams. It's not fun to cheer for a mid-market team. It's only fun to cheer for a baseball team who has a competitive advantage over nearly every other baseball team.

But the owners who OK'd the Lackey/Crawford/Beckett contracts, turned Francona into Valentine, didn't get anything for Theo, turned Josh Reddick and Jed Lowrie into Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon, thought Daniel Bard could be converted into a starter, and paid another AL contender to take Kevin Youkilis when he wasn't really washed up yet?

How sad for you that your team doesn't have the best owners in baseball. Not only have the Red Sox lost their competitive financial advantage over other major league teams, but the air of superiority is rapidly being taken out of the fan base. At some point, the Red Sox are going to have to win more games or Bill may have to face the fact the Red Sox aren't entitled to be the one of the best teams in the majors every single year...and we just can't have that. Everything Bill says and does is the best. If the Red Sox stop winning over a few year span Bill would have to pronounce himself a "baseball widow" until the Red Sox get better owners who care enough to put a winning team on the field. This isn't Bill being a fair-weather fan at all. He will only exclusively be the fan of a winning team, that's all.

Maybe we hadn't veered into James Dolan territory or anything,

I would give it another ten years before the Red Sox are even close to this. The audacity of Bill even writing this sentence amazes me. The Red Sox would need a full decade of futility before they could come close to Dolan territory.

but in professional sports, you can't overcome poor management no matter how much money you have. The 2012 Red Sox were poorly managed. And have been for the past couple of years. It finally caught up to them.

In pretty much anything you can't overcome poor management. This isn't exclusive to professional sports. Of course Bill wasn't saying the Red Sox were poorly managed when they re-signed Josh Beckett, signed Carl Crawford and John Lackey and traded for Adrian Gonzalez, but that's the whole fun part about the revisionist history of it all. Looking back, Bill knows how everything should have been done differently, but he sure didn't say it at the time. Feel sympathy for him. He desperately wants it.

Part 2 in a day or so...