Bill's mailbag will give you herpes

Much like I interrupted the series of Simmons FREE JIM RICE article posts to cover Rick Reilly's attempt to serve as a lobbyist for the Ricketts family, I'm interrupting my breakdown of Simmons's breakdown of the Heat/Bulls game to cover a mailbag he put out last Friday.  Trying to be topical.  The Heat/Bulls game is already old news regardless of whether I continue to post about it tonight or Wednesday; this mailbag contains a bunch of stuff that deserves to be called out as stupid RIGHT THIS SECOND.

So Nino from Queens sent me the following e-mail: "I saw you on TV the other night and told my 3yr old son that Bill Simmons is so big headed that he cant do a little old mailbag anymore. 

Nino is a zilch--obviously mailbag columns are Bill's favorite thing to write, because 1) the readers do half the writing for him and 2) the questions/emails he chooses to print validate every dumb idea he's already ever had.

My son asked what is big headed daddy? And I replied thats when you forgot where your came from. My son replied by saying 'silly.' He says everything is 'silly' these days but it was perfect timing on his part. 

This story is already substantially more interesting that any story Simmons has ever told about his kids.

Come on, Nino, couldn't you have just written, "I'd love for you to write another mailbag soon, I really enjoy them"?  But thanks for the wakeup call. I can't disappoint Nino or little Nino Jr. As always, these are actual e-mails from actual readers.

A truly captivating introduction.  Guy sent an email in which he very, very gingerly insulted Bill.  Bill asked that guy to not insult him and instead be polite.  AND WE'RE OFF TO A FLYING START.

Q: Where does Worm go when he leaves Binghamton?
—Jeff, OKC

Rounders is a perfectly acceptable movie.  It's a solid B.  It's not really worth getting excited about.  There are dozens and dozens of other good gambling movies out there.

[Bill publishes an email from the writers of Rounders, in which they claim (dubiously) that there is a script for Rounders 2, and that Norton/Damon/Turturro/whoever are totally ready to begin shooting]

Wait … what?????? Matt, Edward, John and the rest of us are all set to go. It's that easy? What are we waiting for? Who's not going to see Rounders 2? Can't somebody fund this already? What the hell is happening? How am I supposed to finish the mailbag now?

Of course Bill is infatuated with Rounders, which is maybe one of the top 500 movies of the 90s.  Of course.

Q: I have a new idea for a reality TV show. It's called "Jeer Factor." Basically, it's a contest to find out which situation causes the highest volume of boos: parading Fidel Castro through Little Havana, LeBron James through Cleveland, Kim Jong Sun through Seoul, and Bernard Pollard through Boston. What do you think?
—Colin, Jacksonville

OW-UH SPARTS TRAGEDIES AHHHH JUST AS IMPOHHTANT AS INTAHNATIONAL PAWLUHTICS!

SG: Here's a more realistic idea: Is there a way to figure out which opposing athlete's jersey would go over the worst in a local sports bar? 

No, there is not, and you're a fucking dunce for even having that thought.

Q: You mentioned in your LeBron column that you hate only five teams, and I was shocked to see the Jets not on the list. As a Pats fan, how do they not make your blood boil? They might be my least favorite team in all of sports other than the evil Iceland team from the second Mighty Ducks movie and Kentucky from Glory Road.
—Chris, Perth

Yes, these are Bill's readers, who cannot talk about sports without talking about movies or TV, because who has the attention span to just pay attention to (and discuss) sports?  WHICH SOPRANOS CHARACTER IS EACH MEMBER OF THE 2007-2008 CELTICS?  WHO SAYS NO?

SG: I know they had a nice little mini-run of relevance and hate-ability, but please, let's not forget the DNA of the New York Jets: one great playoff moment that happened 44 years ago, followed by Joe Namath quickly becoming the most overrated QB who ever lived (look up the stats, it's true); Ken O'Brien over Dan Marino; 

And then he goes on and on.  I have to agree with him, though.  The Jets really are historically pathetic.

Q: In a 2009 mailbag (scroll down to end) you compared Tiger Woods to Don Draper. With Tiger regaining his No. 1 ranking and dating Lindsey Vonn, is this now the equivalent of when Draper married Megan and seemingly regained his mojo in Season 5?
—Kyle, Cambridge, MA

Dear Bill, I like sports a lot.  I like them so much that I have an important question to ask you about Mad Men.

Q: Do you have any idea how lucky you are to watch Jackie Bradley Jr on a daily basis?
—Pete Shahid, Charleston, SC

SG: Yes! I'm well aware! Jay-Bee-Jay! Jay-Bee-Jay! Jay-Bee-Jay! Jay-Bee-Jay! Jay-Bee-Jay! Sorry, I interrupted you … keep going.

Let's see Red Sox fans stay giddy with excitement over their new superprospect the first time he goes through a 2-for-20 slump.  HE'S NOTHING BUT ANOTHAH CAWRL CRAHHHHFAHD!  FACK HIM!

This e-mail gave me flashbacks to those NC State and Wisconsin alums gushing about Russell Wilson in my inbox last summer. Could JBJ become baseball's Russell Wilson — one of those absurdly likable athletes who transcends stats, says things like "I don't get nervous to tell you the truth" (an actual JBJ quote), gets better when it matters, and almost seems too good to be true? 

They're both undersized fast black guys.  Gotta be the same person, right?  

Here's the point: The Red Sox took heat for starting Bradley on Opening Day over sending him down for two weeks, then bringing up him in mid-April so they could delay his free agency for a year. And if they were Tampa Bay or Pittsburgh, I get it — small-market teams should always protect themselves against potential stars fleeing for big bucks as long as they can. But the Red Sox have gobs of money to spend every season, as well as a much bigger immediate dilemma: Their fan base had turned on the owners and couldn't have been less excited about this year's team. 

As Chris W explained it: March 2013--Red Sox not in first place, fans not sure whether to be excited about the team.  April 2013--Red Sox in first place, fans confident that it's OK to be excited about the team.

That left the Red Sox with two choices.

Choice A: Send Bradley down for two weeks, look like cheapskates, weaken this year's team for the first two weeks, derail his momentum after a sparkling spring training.

Yeah, look where it got the Nationals with Bryce Harper last year!

Choice B: Reward Bradley by bringing him up right away, get the fans excited, hope he helps the team get off to a monster start, then ride the ensuing momentum to a "NOBODY BELIEVED IN US!" season

No one believed we could field a competitive team with a $160MM payroll, but here we are!

Q: A friend of mine and I have been following you since 1999. We were trying to figure out how many words you have printed since that time. Rules: no Twitter/Instant Media, and no support (you get credit for the comments in the mailbag, but not the mailbag itself). The Over/Under is 2.5 million words. I took the over; hoping that the books cover the slow slide in weekly production. As there is a case of Johnnie Walker Blue resting on it, maybe you can settle the answer. 

SWEET STAKES, BRO!  I can't think of anything that would sooner disqualify a person from being someone I would like to be in the same room with than betting on Bill Simmons.

Still a fan.
—John, Houston

SG: Way way way way way over. Let's say I averaged 5,000 words per week since 1999, which feels super low to me. 

You write like five columns a year at this point.  Let's tap the brakes with regards to that estimate.

Q: In light of Washington's recent play (beating the Lakers, Grizzles and seemingly everyone else) would they not be considered one of the best proponents for your 'Entertaining as Hell Tournament'? 

Ah, a callback to one of Bill's worst ever WHO SAYS NO??? ideas.  In this case, the answer is: the players' union, the owners, and every team that makes the playoffs as a top eight seed and is eager to get them underway.

SG: For a quick refresher, check this footnote. Why wouldn't we reward late bloomers, discourage tanking, tighten the playoff race, create more win-or-go-home games and basically do everything that that EAH Tournament allows? 

That's what the NBA needs--more teams eligible for the postseason!

And by the way, how could you enjoy what happened to Florida Gulf Coast this month and NOT like this idea?

If you're not a fucking idiot?

Q: In Boogie Nights, 

It is 2013.  No one cares.

Q: Do you get a boner every time you type Lebron James?
—Joseph Watley III

SG: Not every time.

(Nodding silently.)

Q: You know there's an ex-college linebacker named Marlon on the Real World this season, right? He started for three seasons and was an honorable mention all Big 12 at Texas Tech. A former college athlete who wasn't able to make money as a professional has now turned his attention to getting on the challenge and dominating in order to make a living? This is the next step in making The Challenge America's fifth major sport! 

Unlike Boogie Nights, not only is The Challenge irrelevant now, it has also always been irrelevant.

Q: You wrote: "LeBron allowing Hinrich to keep driving past him so he could block the ensuing layup. I've been watching basketball forever … I have NEVER seen that before." In fairness, Lucas did that to his half-brother Nathan in the deciding point of the epic one on one playground battle on the River Court on One Tree Hill.

God dammit.

Q: Why wouldn't Oscar Pistorius blame a jealous one-armed man for the murder of his girlfriend? There's clearly motive: the one-armed man could have been jealous of Pistorius's fame because he couldn't achieve the same Olympic fame. Why can't Lifetime show, The Fugitive: South Africa? Think of Pistorius's on the edge of a waterfall diving 100 feet with specialized flippers after screaming "You find that man!" to Jack Bauer or something.
—Alex Futter, West Lafayette, IN

That guy is almost funny enough to be a commenter on Deadspin.

SG: These are all fantastic questions and I don't have answers. 

This is what happens in the echo chamber of stupid that is a Simmons mailbag.

Q: So when did Brady and Belichick officially morph into Jim Kelly and Marv Levy?
—Jeff Ruder, Victoria, BC

SG: Too. Soon.

That one is actually a keeper.  Good for Jeff.

Q: Is it just me or is the Amendola for Welker swap eerily similar to the Celtics downgrading from Ray to Jet.
—Ben R., Philadelphia

SG:  The bigger point: Why would the NFL stick with a salary cap that effectively prevents ANY signature guy from finishing with the team that made him a signature guy? 

Yeah!  Why wasn't the #1 goal of both sides during the CBA negotiations last year to make sure OW-UH GRITTY WHITE GUYS are able to retire as OW-UH GRITTY WHITE GUYS?  Putting aside the fact that the Patriots were in no way unable to sign Welker due to salary cap reasons (which is a monstrous boulder of a thing to put aside, but let's do it anyways), I think we can all agree that ensuring that guys like Welker be able to finish their careers with the teams that made them "signature guys" was definitely more important than the 100 other extremely important issues that needed to be hammered out.

Q: Wouldn't the sport of hockey be infinitely more entertaining if the penalty box was converted into a sensory deprivation chamber? 

Holy fuckballs, no, no it wouldn't!  It would be exactly like hockey is now, but with a stupider penalty enforcement mechanism!

I'm talking no light, no sound, no nothing. When players take a penalty they have to spend a whole two minutes in the dark and silence while they feel shame. Not only that, this would mean that when the penalty is over, players get to fall out of the chamber and onto the ice with the same look of disorientation of a newborn baby. Granted, players would end up taking less penalties as the penalty box would now be as scary as the "Boo Box" in the movie "Hook" albeit with less scorpions. What say you Sports Czar? Are less power plays worth the added entertainment value?
—Eric T., Montreal

Eric T. from Montreal, I'm going to say this as nicely as I can: you're an unfunny, unclever, worthless sack of shit.

SG: Let's at least try this in the KHL or OHL to see if this works. But I'm glad you brought it up. 

Of course he is.

Here's the crucial point about Junior: He's the only home run hitter from the 1990s and 2000s who makes everyone definitively say, "Well, at least we know HE wasn't cheating." 

If you think Jim Thome, Adam Dunn or Frank Thomas are/were juicing, you know nothing about baseball.  Oh, right, almost forgot, Bill knows nothing about baseball.

What's weird is that Frank Thomas was defiantly anti-PEDs even during his playing career, and never gave anyone any reason to think he might have been cheating … but somehow Griffey grabbed the "Well, at least we know HE wasn't cheating torch." Sorry, Big Hurt.

Please reconsider your use of "only" in the previous sentence.

Q: What would be the most devastating PED story ever? 

I don't know, but I'm sure Rick Reilly's coverage of it would be much worse than any grief anyone felt as a direct result of learning about the story itself.

Q: okay, so you are on my "list", you know, the "list" i have w/ my husband that if i were ever to meet you i could hook up w/ you and he wouldn't divorce me. 

It's funny how Bill thinks that simply not using capital letters is a good way to disguise an obviously fabricated email.

(Remember my "De Niro or Pacino?" argument from a 2002 mailbag?)

I certainly don't, and hopefully no one else does either.  Remembering that takes up valuable brain space that could be instead used for anyfuckingthing else.

Q: What does it say about your NBA team when they have been in an arena for 25 years, only this was voted as the biggest moment of the arena by a local radio show?
—Andy Diehl, Madison, WI

The link led to a story about a WWE event that took place where the Bucks play.

SG: It says, "If Seattle doesn't get the Kings, it's getting the Bucks." I'm only half-joking, by the way.

I include this only to serve as a teaser: I am at the end of my fucking rope with the self-pity that Supersonics fans have been publicly drowning themselves in for FIVE FUCKING YEARS NOW.  I'm going to write a long-ass post about it sometime in the next couple of months.  Their team relocated, something that has only happened like twenty other times in NBA history and dozens and dozens more in the other "big four" sports, and they've turned it into their own little 9/11.  Meanwhile, they still have an NFL team and an MLB team to cheer for.  I know Hartford and Quebec City are not as populous as Seattle, but both of those cities lost their only profesional sports team in the last twenty years.  You don't hear the constant wailing of a thousand tortured souls coming out of those places, do you?  That's probably because the fans of those teams got over it and learned that life goes on, something which Seattle sports fans seem completely incapable of.

I can't tell which I would enjoy more: for the Kings to end up staying in Sacramento thanks to a last second deal that was brokered by Clay Bennett, or for Seattle to get the Kings, and then to get to listen to Seattle fans explain why the time their city "stole" (using that term loosely, you know what I mean) a team from another city because of that team's shitty owners is SO DIFFERENT than the time another city stole a team from their city because of their former team's shitty owners.  Fuck you, Sonics fans.  I'm sure some of them are cool and rational, but there are a whole shitload of very uncool and very irrational ones out there polluting the internet with their bitching.  I'm sick of it.

Q: Wasn't losing Wilson the best thing that could have happened to Tom Hanks in Cast Away? 

OK, I'm done.

Gregg: Stooping lower and lower with each passing week

This post is not going to be extensive enough to get the TMQR label.  It's also about an incident that's already a week old.  I am ashamed of myself and I will try to write my usual two shitty copout posts this week as opposed to the single one I wrote last week.  Anyways, I'm sure it's painfully clear to everyone that Gregggggg is in the business of pushing certain stories/lessons.  Undrafted players who have been cut at one point or another are awesome.  Punting is terrible.  Tenths of seconds do not actually exist.  And of course, many players (particularly those MEGABUCKS GLOREE BOYS) are stupid dumb idiots who do stupid stuff like celebrate excessively because they're morons who only care about themselves.  (To his credit, he has occasionally taken the side of the players during certain incidents where they were penalized or fined for TD celebrations.  So he's not completely anti-celebration under all circumstances.  But he also frequently references the stupid white guy "GRRR I HATE HOW THESE PLAYERS LIKE TO DANCE WHEN THEY MAKE A GOOD PLAY, THEIR EGOS ARE TOO BIG" bullshit.  Also, to his discredit, about a hundred different things.)

Now, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if he only pushed his perspective on these items on his readers when events warranted such pushing.  I mean, it would still be pretty bad, but if he were always honest about the facts that led to his referencing his perspective, I could maybe tolerate that.  Sadly, he's so obsessed with pushing his narrative that he can't even surmount that extremely low threshold for my maybe tolerance.  Rather, when he needs to make one of his points, he's more than happy to change facts.  You've probably already seen this, but if you haven't, watch it again, and then join me in celebrating Gregg's complete and total assholery.

Single Worst Play of the Season -- So Far: Trailing 31-28, the Redskins faced third-and-8 at the St. Louis 36 with 1:27 remaining. RG3 threw a 7-yard completion to Josh Morgan, advancing Washington to the 29 and field goal range. More concerned with attention for himself than victory for his team, Morgan celebrated by throwing the ball at a Rams defender. Unsportsmanlike conduct pushed Washington back to the 44, where a desperation field goal try sailed far off the mark.

If I had just started reading TMQ, I might give him a pass for that patently incorrect assessment of why Morgan threw the ball at Cortland Finnegan as perhaps being the result of Gregg not actually watching the play (and maybe having had it explained to him second hand by someone even dumber than he is).  But at this point, I know his game.  I know he watches highlights from every game before he writes.  And I'm 99% sure that in this case, he saw the play lives, since he lives in the DC area.  No no no no--this is not misinterpretation.  This is intentional deception, because it tickles his balls to tell his readers about a ME FIRST player doing something that cripples his team's chances at winning.  Note that he doesn't identify Finnegan by name.  I promise you he knows that Finnegan was the Ram who had the ball thrown at him.  But Finnegan is known as an agitator by most fans, so naming Finnegan might cause the TMQ readers who didn't see or hear about the play and who take Gregg as gospel to question whether Morgan was celebrating or angrily lashing back at a guy who was (as usual) being a complete and total pain in the dick to line up against.  I'm telling you, Gregg knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote that paragraph.  The dots are all there, we just have to connect them.  WAKE UP, SHEEPLE.  Gregg is such a cuntswabber.  He's just the absolute fucking worst.

Bonus idiocy:

Many sports commentators have noted this knucklehead move by Morgan deprived the Skins of a makeable field goal to force overtime. But consider -- it would have been fourth-and-1 on Les Mouflons' 29. Washington rushed for 176 yards on the game, a 6.1-yard average. 

And each and everyone one of their previous rushing attempts in the game came on 4th and 1!  That piece of data is now even truthier than it was before.  I know I just spent like 500 words telling you that Gregg is smarter than he appears; that he's not accidentally misinterpreting events, he's lying about them outright to advance his agenda.  But let me just walk that back a couple of steps: in this case, I really think he is enough of a doofus to think that a team's expected number of yards gained on 4th and 1 with the game on the line can be accurately estimated by taking their average yards per play gained throughout the course of the game to that point.  Yeah, you know what, sometimes he really is just a total shitbrain.

The Redskins could have gone for the first down and positioned themselves to win outright with a touchdown.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BOLD!!!!!!!  EXCEPT WITH BLITZING--DON'T EVER EVER BLITZ, BECAUSE THE OTHER TEAM MIGHT SCORE WHEN YOU DO, AND THEN IT'LL BE ALL YOUR FAULT.  (If I were more awake right now, this is where I'd put an angry paragraph or two about how Stanford closed out their upset win over USC last week by blitzing on every single play of USC's final drive.  BUT WAIT, MATT BARKLEY IS A GOOD QB!  IT'S ESPECIALLY DUMB TO BLITZ GOOD QBS, THEY ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO DO IT!  YOU'RE HANDING THEM FREE TOUCHDOWNS!  And yes, this is a whole post referencing two games that happened 7+ days ago.  Sometimes, you come up with an idea for a post, and then time passes and the subject matter of the post is old news, and then you say fuck it, I'm writing the post anyways.)

Josh Morgan, you are guilty of the single worst play of the season -- so far.

DIE.

My brain is going to explode if I try to do a Simmons or Easterbrook post tonight

Both of those motherfuckers.  Unreal.  Whether it's Gregg lambasting Mike Gundy for allegedly showing poor sportsmanship against Savannah State, when Savannah State's coach went on the goddamn record after the game and thanked Gundy for the way Gundy handled things, or Simmons's douchechilling appearance on PTI (summarized by Bill Brown in the  comments to my last post), they're both too much for me to handle right now.  Instead, let's let Richard Justice have the spotlight.

Ageless Jeter Worthy of MVP Consideration

There will be writers prepared to give Jeter MVP votes well after he retires, but wanting to put him in the conversation this year is only slightly less silly than that.

There can't be a conversation about the American League's Most Valuable Player Award without including Derek Jeter, 

There certainly can.  He's been worth 2.5 rWAR and 3.5 fWAR this year, which doesn't even put him within shouting distance of the top 10.  He's been crappy on defense as always, and merely good on offense.  If there were a separate MVP vote for guys 35 and older, he'd be in contention, although if that imaginary "senior division" vote were fair (and we all know it wouldn't be because baseball writers are worthless pieces of shit) Torii Hunter would win it.  

and doesn't that make this whole season even better?

No.  Always good to lead off your column with a non-rhetorical rhetorical question that most MLB.com readers will answer differently than you want them to.

Jeter is leading the AL in hits

And in plate appearances, meaning he's pretty high on the "outs made" leaderboard as well.

and is second in batting average and fourth in runs. 

You or I could bat leadoff for the Yankees and score a shitload of runs.

He batted .389 in April, 

Making him a strong candidate for AL player of the month for April, which is apparently also known as 2012 AL MVP.

and his average has fallen below .300 for just two days the entire season.

Batting average is a dumb statistic, etc.  His .366 OBP is pretty OK, nothing to sneeze at, also not what you'd want from your leadoff hitter in a perfect world.  But also: intangibles.

His defense at short has been terrific, as usual. 

Lol

Meanwhile, his Yankees have had at least a share of first place in the AL East for 93 straight days, 

Making Robinson Cano and his 6.5 rWAR/6.2 fWAR an excellent candidate for AL MVP runner up to the guy who is having one of the 50ish best seasons of all time by any hitter, ever, in baseball history, in the history of baseball.

and now with the stretch run upon us, Jeter is hitting .378 in September.

As the Yankees fall apart.  Just saying, SOMEONE has to take the fall if they finish behind the two inferior teams that are chasing them down, and hey, shouldn't it be the guy who apparently has leadership skills growing out of his ass?

He's part of what appears to be a close race for the AL MVP Award. 

It does not appear to be anything resembling close.  I don't like the Angels, and I despise the hype that surrounded Trout during his meteoric rise through the minors these past couple seasons, but there isn't much I can say to shit on his 2012.  Dude plays lights out center while absolutely raking.  

There's a case to be made for Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera and Josh Hamilton as well.

Hamilton leads the league in RBIs so of course someone like Justice is going to claim he's part of the race when he's not even the most WAR valuable guy on his own team (good for Adrian Beltre for putting together a great season after getting paid for once, zing, sick burn by me).  Cabrera deserves some props for not being a complete and utter blimp crash at 3rd, and he leads the league in OPS, but clearly, Mike Trout is the only player who should receive a 1st place AL MVP vote this year.

Trout is especially interesting because he didn't come to the big leagues until April 28 but immediately ignited the Angels. They're 68-49 with him in the starting lineup, and he's leading the AL in batting average, runs and stolen bases. Trout is second in OPS, third in OBP and fifth in triples. He has also played a spectacular center field, and with the numbers so close, it might be what decides it.

But then again: does he play shortstop for the Yankees?  Is there a media mandate that he be included in all MVP discussions as long as he's having something resembling a half decent year?  If you blow him, will he give you a gift basket?  Those things could decide the race too, if the race were close, which it's not.

Cabrera is right there, too, leading the AL in OPS and slugging and second in batting average, RBIs and hits. He's fourth in runs and home runs.

And first in being a fat guy playing out of position for a playoff contender.

And there's Hamilton. Despite hitting .202 in June and July, he's leading the AL in home runs and RBIs and is second in runs and fourth in OPS. Also, the Rangers are leading the Major Leagues in runs and have been in first place in the AL West for all but two days. Their lead hasn't been less than three games since April 15.

Hamilton plays on the same team as a bunch of other really good players; players so good they were able to cover for him when he completely no-showed for 1/3 of the season.  Don't forget to factor that into your voting.

The case for Jeter is this:

Jeter-like Jeterness.

• Doing his job at the top of the lineup spectacularly well.

By OBPing a "hey, most teams would take that from their leadoff guy, I guess" .366?  By making sure to touch every base in the proper order as Cano, Fish Fillet Rod, Teixeira, et al drive him in?

• Playing nice defense.

Lol

• Winning.

He wrote that.  Not me.

• Leadership.

That too.

• Being at his best when the pressure is cranked up the most, 

Like during April.

which is pretty much every day of the year with the Yankees.

Oh, well that's just sneaky.  "Give Jeter credit for performing at his best when the chips are down... i.e., ALWAYS.  Except for during June when he hit .232/.295/.313, but that doesn't count, because Jeter."

Regardless of how it plays out, it's fun just having Jeter in the discussion. 

If you are a member of the BWAA or a Yankees fan (or hell, maybe if you're a Red Sox fan, because BOOOOO FACK YOU JETAH THE CHEA-TAH).  If you are anyone else: no.

Scouts have marveled at the quickness of his bat 

I will give $500 to charity if Jeter tests positive for steroids before Halloween.  I'll scan the receipt and post it on the blog.  Promise.  Please please please please please

and his ability to get hits on pitches in tough locations.

Also: Winning.  Leadership.

There was a time last season when it looked like Jeter's best days might be over, 

And they were/are.

and no one wanted to see one of the all-time greats go out this way. He'd simply done too much and meant too much to the game.

/chugs bottle of Pepto

If someone ranked every player the last 100 years in terms of winning, production and citizenship, 

Ooh, a new -ship to go along with the never-explained but always cited leadership he apparently displays regularly.

that is, representing the game the right way, 

A lovely combination of "representing the game" and "playing the game the right way."  Justice is breaking new ground here.

Derek Jeter might be No. 1. He's pretty much the poster boy for what those of us who love the game would like every player to be.

/goes to store, grabs another bottle of Pepto, chugs it before paying for it

And then it goes on for a while longer.  Apparently all you need to do to insert Jeter into an MVP conversation these days is 1) make sure he's hitting over .300 2) claim he's playing great defense, what, is anyone going to be able to definitively prove you wrong? 3) note the fact that the Yankees and their $10 kajillion payroll are in playoff contention and finally 4) spit some boilerplate about playing the citizenship the right way or some shit like that.  It's that simple.  Oh, in closing:

Andy Pettitte considers Jeter both a friend and a teammate.

Well then!

"I mean, he's just the same every day," Pettitte said. "He's out there doing his job, 

Number of players who have been on MLB rosters since opening day who are not doing their jobs: 0

getting hits, 

Lot of guys pulling that one off too

getting on base, 

His BB rate is just over 5%.  His OBP is 42 points higher than his average.  Just sayin'.  I'm fine with the "getting hits" part but I'm going to push back on this one.  GENTLY.

leading us. 

And representing the game the right way

He's just amazing."

OK, $1,000 to charity for a positive steroid test in the next six weeks.  Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please

Bill Simmons: frontrunner, liar, shithead

In the midst of one of the best Red Sox pity parties I've ever read (and we all know Bill has been responsible for dozens of them if you count tweets), Bill tries to sell us some snake oil. 

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. 

It's pathetic but not uncommon for people to name their kids after local sports heroes.  "Here's an unremarkable anecdote with no context: we could start there" is shitty writing. 

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. 

WADE BAWGS: LIKE RYAN REYNOLDS, NAWT A TRUE SUPAHSTAH!  

The first seven guys played a combined 83 seasons in Boston. Gonzalez lasted 21 months. We could start there. 

Yeah, that really says something about something.  That would definitely be a great place for us to start... understanding... stuff.

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

STET AWL CHANGES! STET AWL CHANGES! Maybe if Bill let himself be edited, the word "correlation" would have been changed to "comparison" as he intended. Instead we have a sentence that says that a 2012 trade has nothing to do with anything else that's ever happened to the Red Sox, except the sale of a player 90ish years earlier. 

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

Why wouldn't they be? The Red Sox haven't won a World Series in five years. Obviously it was time for heads to roll. FACK YOU JAWSH!  I SHOULDA NEVAH ALMOST NAMED MY SON AFTAH YOU

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." 

It's picking nits, but I'm pretty sure Valentine has had a lower approval rating since May than Little had at any point except the 24 hours following game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. 

They've allowed the franchise's most successful general manager ever to break his contract without getting anything decent for him. 

Chris W disagrees with me, but I think Epstein is massively overrated. He basically inherited the 2004 WS team, and the only big move he made to set up the 2007 was to overpay for Matsuzaka. He's also got a spotty drafting record. I do think the moves he made to set up the 2011 and 2012 teams were generally smart, and I'm not saying he's talentless. I'll just be surprised if he creates a consistent winner in Chicago. I think he's a middle of the road GM. ANYWAYS back to the tardery. 

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. 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. 

Pro sports owners don't "expect" fans to do anything other than spend money for the product they pay to put on the field. I sincerely doubt that at any time in the 21st century the owner of a big four pro sports team has sat in his office, wringing his hands and sweating, timidly murmuring "But how will I get the fans to TRUST me again?" They are there to make money, and in most cases they do that by trying to create a winning team. Hell, even the Pirates are going that route these days. The perceived relationship Boston fans imagine they have with their teams' executives (ROBERT KRAFT IS AN AWNEST BUSINESSMAN WHO WANTS THE BEST FOR AWWWL OF NEW ENGLAND! I KNOW FROM THE WAY HE SMILES ON TV!) is so fucking pathetic. 

You know what? Let's start

Yes, Jesus on a fucking pogo stick, just start already.

with this e-mail from a Cambridge reader named Kyle, which arrived just a few days before the Red Sox agreed to the biggest salary dump in baseball history. 

"I think I've officially reached a point in my sports fan relationship with the Red Sox akin to being married for twenty years, no longer loving one another, but still staying together for the kids. Good God can this season just end?" 

Fuck you directly in the frontrunningest part of your frontrunning ass, Kyle. I hope you get rickets.

Even if Kyle made the 2012 season sound like a cross between John Travolta's marriage, Jay Leno's relationship with NBC, 

I AM CONNECTED TO THE TV WORLD! CHECK OUT MY PITHY ANALYSIS OF THE INNER WORKINGS OF "THE INDUSTRY," WHICH IS WHAT THOSE OF US IN IT CALL IT!

and every Adam Sandler fan with Adam Sandler, he probably didn't go far enough. After all, you are in a relationship with your favorite teams, right? 

In the sense that you enjoy when they do well and feel bad when they do poorly, yes. In the sense that you feel like they owe you something (other than due care needed to minimize the chances of you sustaining terrible injuries when you attend one of their games, Columbus Blue Jackets I'm looking at you, or is that too soon?), no, absolutely not. 

We purchase tickets

WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE SEASON TICKET HOLDERS FOR ONCE? 

and merchandise; they purchase the players. We agree to remain loyal; they agree not to defecate on that loyalty. And it goes from there. 

It goes from "you can choose to root for your teams or not root for them," you fucking zilch. There is no magical fan/owner loyalty contract involved. 

The best-case scenario for any season? Winning the title. The worst-case scenario? 

Going more than 12 months between titles for any of your city's teams! So taxing! 

Hate-watching your team while rooting for things to bottom out in a comically dreadful way just so you can remain entertained. 

Good to hear that Red Sox fans have decided to mirror the feelings of everyone else on the planet re: their team this year.

The 2012 Red Sox reached that point a few weeks ago. And look, I get it — listening to Boston fans bitch about sports is like listening to John Mayer bitch about his love life.
This was accompanied by the following faux-self-aware-actually-totally-oblivious footnote: 

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 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.

I'll let the writer I most frequently rip off take this one:

Hey, you know what? GO TO HELL. Every fan goes through highs and lows, and yours are no more special than anyone else's. If I hear one more goddamn Boston fan say, "This may be the least likable team in Red Sox history!" I'll shit in their coffee. No one gives a fuck where this Red Sox team ranks on your imaginary historical likability scale. You are not the sun around which the rest of the sporting solar system revolves. Why don't you go beat off to Ben Affleck wearing every Boston sports jersey in The Town and quit smothering the rest of the country with your insufferable bullshit? All of you are horrible and diseased.

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. 

No, clearly you cannot. 

It happens. 

And gives us a chance to concoct lies about how we're not a bunch of frontrunners. 

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

/steam pouring out of Larry B's ears 

Fuck each and every last person who read that and even briefly considered agreeing with it. 

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

[joke about Boston's racism here] 

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

Life was hahhhhhhhd! So hahhhhd, especially when your city was unable (for obvious reasons) to enjoy the greatest dynasty in modern American sports history as it unfolded just down the road from Fenway in the Gahhhhhhden. 

You talked yourself into this being "The Year" every spring, and then, every September … it didn't happen. 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. 

And then everything turned. We won the World Series, shed the curse, buried some demons, 

came to the collective conclusion that we deserve to have a World Series contender each and every single season, or else cry and bitch to anyone dumb enough to listen about the cross we carry, 

moved on with our lives. Had you asked any Red Sox fan in September 2004, "If you win the World Series, would you care what happened next?," I'm pretty sure that every single person would say, "No, I don't." 

Well, here's what happened. 

Brace yourselves. 

We started spending money like the Yankees. Our charming, broken-down, illogically constructed museum of a baseball park was overhauled and turned into a cash cow 

How dare they put in more seats when there is tremendous demand for tickets! 

(same for the streets surrounding it). 

What could he even be bitching about? I've never been to a game there. Is the team holding pregame events on the streets outside the stadium? Are local businesses advertising their support for the Red Sox in an attempt to attract customers? THE NERVE. 

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, 

WE HAD A DEAL, JAWN HENRY! YOU'RE CRAPPING ON MY LOYALTY! 

/Bill buys $400 seats to [the next Red Sox/Yankees series] 

on your forehead 

Wait, did he just bitch about the team putting its logo on hats? 

and everywhere else you could imagine (leading to a general dumbing down of the fan base 

To the extent that the fan base could have somehow gotten dumber after 2004, I'm pretty sure it happened because some people are fucking frontrunners who just want to cheer for a winner even if they know nothing about the team or the game being played. I'm even more pretty sure that it didn't happen as a result of Red Sox ownership expanding their marketing efforts. 

and the unconscionable decision to encourage Fenway fans to sing along to "Sweet Caroline" during the eighth inning of every game, even ones that we're losing), only we looked the other way because they kept funneling so much of their profits back into the team. There were little signs they might be losing their way, 

Barf 

like when they purchased Liverpool's soccer team and expected Red Sox fans to adopt it; 

Barf 

or when John Henry publicly regretted Carl Crawford's lavish contract in only his first season, then randomly showed up on a local radio show to defend himself; 

Good to know Bill uses "randomly" in the same incorrect way college girls do. 

or when they unveiled their 100th aniversary Fenway Park brick program, satiating the three people who had been dying to spend $475 (plus tax) to autograph their own brick inside Fenway. 

Every team has about 10 obnoxious money grabs going at any particular time. Leave it to a Red Sox fan to classify one of them as evidence that ownership is "losing their way." 

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

Nobody really stopped to ask any questions about all these things that are happening around the league to every single team/fanbase in one way or another, until the team had the audacity to not win all the time. 

we'd eventually remember it as the "beer and fried chicken team," 

Because of course you dickholes think that had everything to do with the team's collapse. 

and really, that's all you need to know — 

WE COULD STAHHHT BY NOTING THAT THERE ARE MORE ADS IN FENWAY IN 2012 THAN THERE WERE IN 1843; THAT MIGHT BE AWL YOU NEED TO KNOW IF WE JUST STAHHHT RIGHT THEY-AH 

followed by Terry Francona being smeared in a Boston Globe feature a few days after he stepped down as manager. 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? That was last winter for Red Sox fans. The waiter finally dropped off that monstrosity of a check. 

Say Papelbon closes out the Orioles in game 162 and the Rays don't complete a once-or-twice-a-season comeback against the Yankees. Then the Sox lose to the Rangers in 4 games in the ALDS. Imagine the pulse of Red Sox nation then! I know it sounds like lunacy, but I want to go out on a limb and say that stumpfuckers like Bill wouldn't have been blabbering any of this "the ownership group lost its way, there are too many ads in Fenway" nonsense. Maybe if they subsequently bombed out in 2012, there would be whispers, but still, nothing approaching the pile of dinosaur shit you've been reading. Let me make this as simple as possible: the Red Sox stopped being excellent for like 16 months. Red Sox fans are huge frontrunners so this greatly distressed them. But no one wants to cop to their frontrunnerism, and so Bill is speaking for what is likely a large chunk of them and making up lies to cover that frontrunnerism. He's about to really get into it, so allow me to translate. 

Yup … we had turned into the New York Yankees, the team we always hated the most. 

Opening day payrolls by year (MLB rank out of 30 teams in parentheses)

2004

NYY $182 MM (1) 

BOS $125 MM (2)

2007

NYY $189 MM (1)

BOS $143 MM (2)

2010

NYY $206 MM (1)

BOS $162 MM (2)

2011

NYY $201 MM (1)

BOS $161 MM (3)

Only then did the Red Sox become the Yankees!

We spent money just as recklessly and senselessly. 

On players who didn't deliver postseason success. 

The fan bases for other teams despised us just as much. 

Well of course. 

We had the same "If you don't win the title, you've totally failed" conundrum staring at us every spring. 

I find it hard to cheer for a team that doesn't win titles. 

A few weeks ago, my wife was watching Pretty Woman for the 10,000th time while I was sitting next to her answering e-mails. 

I AM VERY SERIOUS ABOUT ENCOURAGING MY SYCOPHANTIC FANS! 

The scene came on when millionaire Richard Gere decides to save that shipping company instead of purchasing it just to blow it up, when Jason Alexander (totally evil) questions what they're doing, and then Gere says something like, "I'm tired of making money. I want to build something." My head popped right up. Wasn't that the Red Sox? 

I'm so distressed by my team's five year title drought that I'm trying to cover up my frontrunnerism by applying a completely uninspiring and inapplicable quote from a romantic comedy. 

What were we building? What's fun about rooting for a team of staggeringly overpaid players who were collected with little rhyme or reason? 

If they don't win titles? (I also like the idea that the 2012 Red Sox roster was assembled "with little rhyme or reason." WHY SIGN THE TWO BEST POSITION PLAYER FREE AGENTS IN THE 2010-2011 OFFSEASON CLASS AT POSITIONS OF NEED FOR THE TEAM? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, EPSTEIN?) 

The Red Sox spent $173.2 million on this year's roster— 

A roster that won't be winning the World Series— 

you couldn't separate the money from the performance. 

You couldn't separate the fact that they were being paid salaries (that were for the most part) determined by the going market value of baseball players, and yet were not leading the division. 

Not for a second. It lingered over everything like a stale fart. Throw in the team's general unlikability

Throw in the team's inability to win at a .600 clip 

(especially Beckett, who regarded the fans and media with real contempt) 

Especially Beckett, after whom I almost named my kid, you know, BACK WHEN HE WAS HELPING THE RED SOX WIN TITLES, HOLY SHIT BILL, HOW ARE YOU THIS OBLIVIOUS 

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. 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. 

I have never been so embarrassed about someone else's fandom. It's a new low for Bill here on FireJay, which of course is saying a lot. I can't finish this shit.

Mailbag? More like mailBAD, Part 1

Bill published it.  I promised a writeup.  And only four days late, you're getting just that.  Actually you're getting part of just that.  I didn't make it all the way through.  And I just read his "25 best storylines of the NBA playoffs" article and it's a fucking garbagecluster so now I've eventually got to do a writeup of that.  Jesus, life down here in this basement is tough.

/eats family sized bag of Sun Chips, falls asleep in front of TV blaring infomercials

When I heard about the "Fenway 100" anniversary celebration before Friday's Red Sox–Yankees game, my guard went flying up at the speed of a vintage Pedro fastball. See, we went from having neglectful owners (the 1970s) to incompetent owners (the 1980s and 1990s) to opportunistic owners who transformed the franchise (in a good way — we won two titles) while scraping every possible penny of profit out of their investment, to the point that Yaz was probably afraid to come to Fenway today because he didn't want to be murdered, chopped up and turned into commemorative Yaz-flavored kielbasa pieces for $499.95 per bite. 

In other words your team had a series of owners who were exactly like most other owners of their generation.  Neglectful, incompetent, intensely profit-focused: like 99% of all current owners can be described by at least one of those.  (Exception: Mark Cuban, who is intensely profit-focused in everything else he does so that he doesn't have to be with the Mavericks.)  WE AHHHH SPECIAL!  THINGS AH DIFFERENT HERE AND YOU WOULD NOT UNDAHSTAND!  WE HAVE SUFFAHED MO-AH THAN YOU HAVE, CLEVELAND!  No really he made that argument once.

The thought of a "Fenway 100" celebration made me nervous.

That's one of the stupidest things I've ever read.  Even the world's shittiest owners can put on a good ceremony if iconic players are in attendance.  Hell, Bill wrote a great article like a month ago about that very event happening at a Golden State Warriors game.  I mean, the owner in question was mercilessly booed, but people still went nuts for the iconic player.  It's not like that kind of thing is going to get screwed up.

And then the players came pouring out on the field, one after the other, and … well …


I mean …


What can you say? 

"My team has been around for a long time, so it's not too surprising that they have some legendary players.  And that those players took a day from doing nothing to show up for this.  Neat."

What can you say when every checkpoint from your entire life happens to be huddled as one big mass of Red Sox jerseys in the only hometown park you ever had? 

" (those are ditto marks)

There were Fisk, Rice, Pedro, Big Mo, Nomar, Remy, Rico … it was like a 35-man tie for "Guy I Was Most Excited to See Again." Even better, they invited everybody, so for every childhood hero, there was also a Mike Stenhouse, a Shag Crawford, even a Steve Lomasney. I ended up getting greedy and being bummed out that El Guapo and Freddie Lynn didn't show up. Talking about it with my father later, he mentioned the moment when Fisk, Yaz and Rice helped out with the first pitch — how he couldn't help but notice that Freddie Lynn was missing, how there was something fitting about Lynn not being there for that moment, either.

"He never should have left Fenway," my dad said for the 10,257th time. "Perfect park for him. He would have made the Hall of Fame if he stayed."

Lynn was a lefty who had a reputation for hitting the ball to the opposite field well, so Fenway was probably a good place for him.  Then again, he nearly broke his back slamming into the Green Monster during the 1975 World Series.  And then again again, if you're the kind of player who can only make the HOF if you play half your games in a specific ballpark, you are probably not a HOFer at all.

We have been having the same conversation about Freddie Lynn since I was 13. He should have stayed. These are the things you think about when your entire life is flashing before your eyes. Football is more popular, basketball is more marketable, hockey is more exciting, soccer means more throughout the world. But baseball has a way of making you think about everything that ever happened to you, every conversation you ever had, every place you ever lived, everything. I saw Millar and thought of standing in the tunnel at Fenway in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, when he was drawing that walk against Rivera. 

I should go back and do some research on that story of Bill's, but why the hell was he not in his seat?  Seems likely that he was trying to beat the crowd out of the ballpark if the game had ended with a Yankees win.  Classic Bill.

I saw Yaz and thought about him popping that ball up against Gossage, seeing it coming down, praying for a miracle that wouldn't come. I saw Pedro and thought of those precious nights at Fenway when he'd give up his first hit and the crowd would collectively sigh, as in, "Damn, I'm not seeing a no-hitter tonight." I saw Mo and thought about that hideous strike season, a year after I had moved back to Boston, when Big Mo was the only Red Sox player worth seeing. I saw Nomar and thought about how, once upon a time, it was Nomar, then A-Rod, then Jeter (in that order). 

There was never a time when it was that.  Not any onces upon any times.

I saw Remy and Rice and thought about the time Remy blew out his knee and Rice had to carry him back to the dugout, and I saw Evans and thought about the time he got beaned in the Seattle game and my dad and I thought he was dead. I saw Fisk and thought about that first White Sox game when he came back and rammed it right between our eyes.

I didn't see Freddie Lynn, and that mattered, too. So did the fact that I didn't even realize Clemens was missing until about 20 minutes after the ceremony. 

But please, tell us: how will you look back on that moment 10 years from now?  And how will you look back on the 10 years from the moment when you looked back on the ceremony 10 years after that?

All of this mattered. All of it. The Red Sox have been screwing just about everything up lately, but today wasn't one of those times. Let's hope that ceremony doesn't end up being the highlight of the 2012 season.

If the rest of us are lucky, it'll be outdone by a full-fledged dugout brawl between Valentine and Youkilis as Carl Crawford attempts to burn Fenway to the ground.

Q: I'm turning 30 and the only thing I want for my birthday is a new mailbag. The only thing. 

You're either super rich or super worthy of being shot into deep space.

I even told my fiance not to worry about giving me a gift. I hope you can come through for me, for all of us.


— Jana Fischer, Boise, ID


SG: I don't know, Jana. Lots of people turn 30. 

Like my dad, this one time!  Let me tell you about it!

I need a little more prodding.

It's astonishing: the more popular he gets (to the extent that it can be quantified, I would guess that he's currently more popular than he's ever been due to the relative success of Grantland), the more he needs to make sure everyone knows how popular he is.  That's not a hallmark of an insecure person or anything though.

Q: When a soon to be Holy Cross freshman is getting action in a 1966 Driver's Ed class on episode of TV's best show (Mad Men), I think that means it is time for a mailbag. Given that it is Holy Cross, it wasn't co-ed yet and that it was before the "free love" era, what are the odds that was the best that guy was going to do until he got back home next summer?
— John, Dunwoody, GA

SG: The odds are lower than you think. My dad went to Holy Cross in the late-'60s [rest of answer deleted because ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]

I HAVE A FAMILY!  THEY HAVE DONE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT!

Q: It's 4/20 on Friday. You almost always write Fridays and you have owed us a mailbag for weeks. Also half your audience will get high before they read that mailbag anyway. Do I have to spell this out for you Simmons? 4/20 MAILBAG!
— MG, NY NY


SG: OK, now we're talking. I'm almost convinced. I'm on the brink.

Guarantee you that guy is super annoying to get high with.  MG, I mean.  But yeah also Bill.

Q: Sports guy. Deployed in Kuwait right now. Entering the 2-3 month point when you realize your life is depressing. How do you feel about a mailbag? I'm begging.
— Andrew Gerry, Udairi, Kuwait


SG: Now that's a good reason for a mailbag! Stay safe out there, Andrew. As always, these are actual questions from actual readers.

That's some good 21st century corporate PR material.  I support soldiers!  Everyone likes that, right?  Next mailbag Bill will bend over backwards to make sure everyone is aware that he is aware of breast cancer.

Q: Now that Dwight is out for the season, how likely is it that The Ewing Theory will soon become The Howard Theory?


— Kyle, Toronto, Ontario

SG: It's a perfect storm: You have the possibly overhyped superstar who never won anything; everyone writing off his team for the playoffs; a group of players who probably weren't crazy about becoming part of Howard's soap opera these past few months; a first-round matchup against a totally unproven Pacers team; and a coach who'd love nothing more than to shove it to the guy who wanted him out all season. The Ewing Theory Committee is on high alert. 

The best part about the Ewing theory, besides the fact that it's ridiculous bullshit fueled entirely by confirmation bias, is that the 1999 Knicks won a whole like three more playoff games after he got injured before losing to the Spurs in the Finals.  Not that their playoff run wasn't impressive or anything, but I just like that if (God forbid) you need to explain it to someone who's never heard of it, you end up saying "Well the Knicks made the conference finals with Ewing, then he got hurt, then they won the conference finals, then they lost in the next round.  And then the following year, with him back in the lineup, they made it back to the conference finals.  So as you can see, they were way better off without him.  Oh and also, here's the REAL proof: they've won a whole zero playoff series since his final season with them in 2000."  If you get all the way through that without the other person punching you or walking away, the nonplussed look on their face will be worth 1000 words.

Couldn't you see Orlando making, like, 20 of 35 3s in Game 1 or Game 2, then doing the same thing in Game 3, followed by Indiana getting tight and everyone saying, "Wait a second, Orlando can't actually win this series without Dwight, right????" More important …

He got the part about Indiana playing like crap and looking tight right.  The part about Orlando playing well, not so much.  I still think Pacers in 6.

Q: With Howard out for the Olympics, Stiemsma has to take his spot right?
— @bobfuton (via Twitter)


SG: Look, Greg Stiemsma already went from never averaging 12 minutes a game for a Big Ten school to averaging 20 minutes a game as a valuable backup big man for an NBA title contender. You're really telling me that "Greg Stiemsma, Gold Medalist, USA" is far-fetched at this point?

And it might be wishful thinking, but I'm also holding out hope for Hawks in 5.  Might take them 6 though.

Anyway, I'm glad Mr. Futon brought this up because I spent the morning freaking out about our gold-medal chances. Here are the nine definites for Team USA …


[long breakdown of the likely US roster, highlighting uncertainties with big men and the fact that Spain can throw both Gasols and Serge Ibaka at us]

In all seriousness, here's what we should actually do. First, we send Kobe, LeBron, Wade, Coach K and Durant to KG's Malibu house right after the Finals. They deliver the following message:

"We're looking for Andrew Bynum's place, do you have his address?"

We only need you for TWO games. You're going to be using the summer to stay in shape, anyway — what better way to stay in shape than a few weeks of July practices against the best players in the world in Vegas? From there, we'll go to London and stick you in a fire extinguisher case for the preliminaries — "ONLY BREAK IF YOU REALLY NEED KG." You can cheer on the guys, F-bomb our opponents from the bench, scream encouragement like a lunatic and do KG things. 

A couple weeks back I was thinking to myself that pretty much everyone I know who uses the "[Person] is doing [Person] things!" bit is obnoxious.  Well, lookie there.

Then, we'll bring you out for the medal games against France and Spain. You can finally get revenge on Pau Gasol for the 2010 Finals when you were playing on one leg. You can win a gold medal and add to your legacy. And by the way? WE NEED YOU. Win this with us.

No way Garnett turns them down. 

Garnett turns 36 in a few weeks.  I watched every minute of the Hawks/Celtics game earlier this evening; he played like he was 56.  In that column I posted about last week, Simmons gushed and oohed and ahhed about Garnett's midseason bounceback.  Here's the thing: the only reason he achieved a bounceback in March is because he was playing like dogshit in December and January.  Dude isn't one of the 12 best American basketball players right now.  He's not close.  He might not be one of the 12 best American big men.  Christ.  I'd rather have Javale McGee on the Olympic team.  YES I SAID IT AND I SORT OF MEAN IT.  I don't know which is more preposterous--this KG idea, or the idea that an objective person at any point, ever, could have preferred NOMAH to Fish Fillet-Rod.  They're both stupefyingly outrageous.

Q: How long do you think it will take for Bill O'Brien to get the "old person smell" out of his office?


— Mike P, Philly


SG: (Afraid to say anything.)

Ah, yet another Simmons reader writing C+ jokes that get published because most of Bill's own material is more in the C-/D+ range.

Q: Is it me or is Kill Frank Gore's Head going to be the most popular team name in fantasy next year?


— Butter, West Palm Beach

It's you, you fucking prong.

SG: Absolutely. I'm also excited for the obligatory terrible metal rock song with the chorus, "KILL THE HEAD (AND THE BODY WILL DIE)!!! KILL THE HEAD (AND THE BODY WILL DIE)!!!" 

Like I said, C-/D+ range.

That reminds me, where was the WWE during this Gregg Williams saga? How did they not create a wrestling manager/Williams parody who keeps "crossing the line," offers bounties for his wrestlers to injure other wrestlers, stirs up an ongoing moral dilemma and comes out to the entrance song, "Kill the Head (and the Body Will Die)"? How long do we have to wait?

F.

Q: How is Grantland not reviewing Jennifer Love Hewitt's new show The Client List? 

Get Klosterman on the red phone!  Sports fans who don't actually enjoy sports are clamoring for some analysis of The Client List!

It is female porn. There are so many guys with six pack abs that all need Jennifer to "massage" them in all the right places. Insecure men leaving their women. Overdone Texas stereotypes. Please get someone on this show asap.

— Jeffrey, Austin

Please go live in the woods somewhere and stop bothering people.  (Credit to Don Rickles)

SG: Done and done. We're launching a weekly "Hate Watching: The Client List" recap post next week on our Hollywood Prospectus blog. 

Reading that sounds about as worthwhile as watching The Client List.

Q: When the 8-seeded Kings took a 3-0 lead on the Canucks, I was reminded of how little advantage Vancouver received for their amazing regular season. 

For their hard work, the Canucks received home ice advantage throughout the playoffs and the easiest road possible to the Finals.  That's plenty.  Say what you will about the virtues of having eight teams in each conference make the playoffs, but if you start with that as a given, the Presidents Trophy winner has a pretty sweet deal.  Better deal than the NBA's best regular season team gets; they don't get the benefit of reseeding for the second round.  I don't want to ask you to think too far outside the box, but when you were eating those paint chips and pondering home ice advantage, maybe what you should have been reminded of is that the Canucks aren't that good when only one of the Sedins is playing and that Jonathan Quick is a monster.

Here's a dramatic and controversial plan that could keep ESPN's talking heads busy for weeks. I call it "Game 8." It's simple and beautiful. The 1 and 2 seeds only need to win 4 out of 7 as usual, but the low seeds need to win 5 games total. How do we do this? They could win 5-0, 5-1 or 5-2 in a normal 7-game series. But, if the low seed is leading 4 games to 3? The sportstalkopalyse: Game 8. At the high seed's home arena. Winner take all. 

Fuck it, why stop there?  If Game 8 is tied after regulation, there's no overtime... WE GO STRAIGHT TO GAME 9.  AND REPLACE THE PUCK WITH A BOUNCY BALL.  Yeah, you know what I've been thinking while watching this year's playoffs?  Game 7 just isn't fair enough.  We need to tweak that a little.

What a fucking jackass.  How could he make this email worse?

As you say: Who says no?

And there you have it.

— Brent T., Los Gatos, CA


SG: Let's be honest: The only hockey-related ideas that "could keep ESPN's talking heads busy for weeks" would be Tebow, Peyton or LeBron signing with an NHL team. 

Hoo hoo!  THERE'S some decent material from Bill!  All you have to do to get him to be mildly funny is get him riled up about his employer!

Anyway, I like the spirit of your idea but don't agree with the execution — the no. 1 seed shouldn't have to play an extra playoff game. 

THIS IS WHY HE'S THE VP OF COMMON SENSE, FOLKS.  SIT BACK AND WATCH HOW IT'S DONE.

I'd rather see the NBA, NHL and MLB adopt the following idea: give no. 1 seeds an extra home game in Round 1. In baseball, change Round 1 to a 2-1-2 format; in basketball and hockey, change it to a 2-2-3 format. 

That's pretty dumb, although certainly less dumb than 95% of the changes he proposes.  Seems like a good spot to take a breather.  More tomorrow (no for reals).

Followup from yesterday

I spent hours--LITERALLY hours--on that post. OK, fine, I literally spent one hour on it. But there was some great stuff I missed. Let's go to the tape.

Angelo points out how asinine this is:

The last two Bird-McHale-Parish efforts ('91 and '92, two severely underrated teams) fell short because the Legend just couldn't stay healthy.

The Celtics won it all in 1986. In 1987 they lost in the Finals to some team from the BEST coast. In 1988 they lost to a rising Detroit team in the conference finals. In 1989 Bird was hurt all year and they failed to win a single playoff game (as the 8 seed). In 1990 Bird was healthy and playing mostly like his old self... and they still didn't make it out of the first round. In both 1991 and 1992 Bird missed some time, and they eventually won a single series before bowing out. So let's total it up: 1987 to 1992: six seasons, three with a healthy Bird, two with a somewhat healthy Bird, seven playoff series won. In other words, a fading and later irrelevant team with a fading superstar.

To hear Simmons tell the story out of context, those last two Bird teams could have been contenders if only Bird had been 100%! SEVERELY UNDERRATED, which is what Klosterman thinks actually makes them a little bit overrated. Is your brain exploding right now? Well I hope you're sitting down for this part: there might have been a little problem standing in the way of the 1991 and 1992 Celtics even if Bird had been at 100%. Yeah, that guy and his team that went 30-9 in those two playoffs might have had a little something to say about Basketball Jesus and his creaky teammates had they crossed paths. In 1991, the Detroit team that bounced Boston in six games couldn't get a single game off the Bulls. In 1992, the Cleveland team that ousted Boston in seven only took Chicago six.

Chris W figuratively jumps on this pile of garbage:

What about Doc finally (and belatedly, but whatever) figuring out the value of a locked-in playing rotation? Even when they won the 2008 title, Doc was routinely playing 11 guys in one half — he just couldn't grasp the concept of "stick to eight or nine guys, make sure everyone knows their minutes, don't deviate from this"

Bill's right--during the 2008 playoffs Rivers ran a ten man rotation. But just because it worked that one time doesn't mean it was a good tactic, right? And if Bill says eight is the way to go, it's the way to go, right? Oh shit. Well fuck. Seems like Doc might have already heard that one somewhere. That's not to say running ten deep would be the right thing to do this year, given their injury issues. I'm sure no Celtics fan wants to see Marquis Daniels or E'Twaun Moore getting minutes in the playoffs. I just find it funny that the Celtics won a title giving minutes to every guy on the roster, then switched to a tighter rotation and failed to win again the following three seasons (including two pretty disappointing second round losses), and now Bill is thrilled that circumstance has forced Rivers into running a tight rotation this year. CHAMPIONSHIP SECURED. NOW TO PLAN THE PARADE ROUTE.

I hope the Celtics get swept in the first round, then dismantle their team, then TD Garden burns to the ground. And while we're sort of on the subject, fuck the Bruins with a rusty tetherball pole.

Fucking idiot thinks Alex Smith should have made fucking idiotic play

Mike Florio, peddler of ridiculously misguided moral indignation, guy who has the reading comprehension skills of a 5th grader, the floor is yours.

While perusing Peter King’s always-indispensable Monday Morning Quarterback column,

MMQB is completely dispensable (unless you're looking for discussion of designer coffee, the Red Sox, fruit-flavored beer, and The Office). Big Daddy Drew's writeup of MMQB is indispensable (if you like to laugh).

I remembered a point that got lost in the frenzy of weekend football action.

This point got lost because anyone who tried to make it in front of the people they watched the game with was immediately laughed out of the room.

The thrilling finish we enjoyed on Saturday shouldn’t have happened.

In MMQB, King takes a great look at the bowling-ball block from 49ers tackle Joe Staley on Saints safety Isa Abdul-Quddus that cleared the final portion of Alex Smith’s path to the end zone for a 28-yard go-ahead touchdown run.

Really, King's writeup had little to do with the point Florio's trying to make. He just wanted to do some networking during his post by posting a link to King's column. Coincidentally (OR IRONICALLY?????), King himself constantly networks within his columns, although I can't recall him networking with Florio at any point. Probably because Florio stinks, big time.

But Smith arguably

Florio loves misusing "arguably." Unfortunately, there is nothing arguable about what Smith did on the play Florio's about to address.

should have gone Brian Westbrook, taking a knee at the one with 2:11 to play. (And, yes, 2:11 was left on the clock when Westbrook infamously sacrificed a touchdown.)

THAT PROVES HE SHOULD HAVE DONE IT! TEBOW THREW FOR 316 YARDS AGAINST THE STEELERS! COINCIDENCE??!?!?!?!?!!?

The clock would have trickled to two minutes, the Saints had only one timeout, and the Niners would have been able to milk the clock under 40 seconds before kicking what would have been the game-winning field goal.

Game winning field goal, huh? Well that settles it. Good thing that hypothetical field goal that would have gone through the uprights at :38ish would have won the game. The TD "drive" highlighted by the Jimmy Graham catch and run that the Saints put together in real life after the Smith TD took :34. But a game winning field goal is a game winning field goal, so I guess it wouldn't have mattered if the Saints had scored that TD or a similar one after the hypothetical FG. The game would already have been won.

Instead, the 49ers left the Saints and quarterback Drew Brees way too much time — and Brees took full advantage of it. Fortunately for the 49ers, Brees took too much advantage of it.

Looks like the Pro Football Talk editor had MLK day off.

Instead of having to pull the latest Dwight Clark/Terrell Owens rabbit out of their hats, the 49ers merely should have had to keep the Saints from scoring a field goal with roughly 30 seconds on the clock.

Something they doubtless would have done, except for the fact that the Saints scored a TD in roughly 30 seconds in that same situation in the real game. In a tie game, and if you're going to be able to run the clock down to :01 before the kick so that the worst case scenario is overtime, I say don't score the TD. In all other situations, you've got a lane to the end zone, fucking take it or risk being labeled the second biggest asshole in sports history after that one guy who returned the fumble the wrong direction and threw it out the side of the end zone.

Florio's post in its entirety should have read: "Remember that time Westbrook took a knee instead of scoring because doing so meant the game was over as long as Philly didn't fumble any of the next three snaps? Alex Smith wasn't in nearly that same situation on Saturday, but still, that Westbrook play was awesome."

PS- the Cardinals arguably should have let the Rangers score more runs in the game 7 of the WS, because then they could have produced a more memorable finish if they came back to win.

WMTMQR: In which Gregg admits that he's a dope

I mean, he admits it really really really really indirectly. But we'll take what we can get. First: an extended metaphor that football fans can surely appreciate.

"In the last days of Narnia..."

So begins the final book of "The Chronicles of Narnia" --

Are you sure that wasn't the opening sentence of "The Old Man and the Sea?" This can only go good places. Hopefully he breaks down how scientifically unrealistic the Narnia series is.

a volume that's unlikely to become a big-budget Hollywood movie, since all the children and the cute talking animals are slaughtered by a hideous demon named Tash.

How is that different than Toy Story 3?

Which sounds a little like Texans.

Yes, they both start with the same letter.

The Indianapolis Colts under Peyton Manning have been the Narnia of the NFL. Everything's always sunny. Manning always starts: opening day was the first time he didn't start since 1997.

Strrrretching the metaphor

The seasons are always good: The Colts have made the playoffs a record-tying nine straight seasons.

Strrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeetching

Players and coaches are composed, behaving with dignity.

Except when Tony Dungy claims that homosexuals will burn in hell forever.

The crowd is orderly.

And fat.

The two domed stadia in which Manning toiled have been the gleaming Cair Paravel of pro football. And like all great champions in mythology, Manning wears a special ring.

STRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEETCHING

The primary hero in the C.S. Lewis books is an English schoolboy who becomes Peter the High King -- tall, brave and humble, just like Manning.

Tall, brave, and fetus-headed.

(A standard literary criticism of Lewis' creation is that the strange races of Narnia need a white male to lead them.)

Just another reason Avatar is fucking stupid.

For more than a decade, Manning has been Peyton the High King to the NFL.

Tony Dungy, the Colts' coach for most of the Manning years, and for their Super Bowl win, has been the NFL's Aslan, a superpowered being. Even today, having left the game, Dungy is turned to for wisdom more than any other figure in football.

And thrusts his self-righteous wisdom upon those who don't ask. "If I'm [name of player who is in trouble with Goodell for being photographed having a beer], here's what I do now: donate a game's paycheck to Focus on the Family. Then..."

If he took over the reins in Indianapolis again, he would be greeted like Aslan returning to end the perpetual winter of the second Narnia volume.

Nah, things have been going just great under Jim Caldwell.

/imagines Caldwell stand expressionless on the sideline during another Colts playoff loss

And Dwight Freeney is the Reepicheep of the NFL, far more powerful than his modest stature -- OK, enough with this metaphor.

Yeah, you think? And then he went on for two more paragraphs, which I didn't bother to copy and paste. If nothing else, Greggggggg has his finger squarely on the comedic pulse of his readers.

Ivy League quarterback note: Fight Fiercely Harvard! Ryan Fitzpatrick, Harvard '05 -- married to Liza Barber, Harvard '05, a former Crimson soccer star -- threw four touchdown passes and no interceptions on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs, a 2010 playoff team. Pip pip! Right you are! Buffalo Bills teammates kept Fitzpatrick fired up by singing on the sidelines, "Come on chaps, fight for Harvard's glorious name/won't it be peachy if we win the game!" Fitzpatrick has asked Bills' management to institute a postgame sherry hour.

Oh yeah, assuming his readers are pretentious wine-sipping twats, he definitely has his finger squarely on their comedic pulse.

Sweet Play of the Week: TMQ's immutable law holds: Rush Eight If You Want to Block That Punt. NFL coaches rarely send a big rush after the punter, fearing a roughing call and generally being hyper-conservative.

This happens like three or four times every game.

Trailing 24-17 midway through the fourth quarter, Jersey/B forced a Dallas punt: and shocked the visiting Cowboys with an all-out eight-man rush.

It wasn't so much "shock" as "a shitty blocking scheme" (Cris Collinsworth broke it down beautifully on SNF) that caused the block.

Speaking of nutty, the Ryan brothers ran every funky defensive front in the book against each other. My favorite was a Dallas defensive snap with three down linemen and both corners blitzing. Yet the result of all the funky defensive tactics was a 27-24 final score with 390 offensive yards gained by one team and 360 yards gained by the other. That's a pretty conventional outcome. Maybe one of the Ryans should try a standard 4-3.

/head asplodes

This just in, people: if an unconventional scheme produces an outcome that isn't weird or wildly successful, there was no point in instituting it.

Sweet 'N' Sour Play of the Week: In the season opener, the count was Green Bay 42, New Orleans 34, Saints on the Packers' 1 for an untimed down following a penalty in the end zone as time expired. The Saints employed a heavy package with six offensive linemen and three tight ends. Power back Mark Ingram went straight up the middle, run stuffed, game over. That was sweet for fans of the defending champion, and in this game, a rare play that looked like old-fashioned football (see more below).

Where the fuck were the Football Gods? Shouldn't they have been rewarding the Saints for playing old skool hardnose smashmouth three yards and a cloud of dust in your face cliche cliche cliche football?

Sour for Saints' fans was a bland call from usually daring Sean Payton.

Just like the Immutable Law of Cold Coach states "cold coach equals victory unless the more warmly dressed coach wins in which case don't write about it," the Football Gods only reward smashmouth play calls when those calls work. It's quite the feedback loop.

Maybe It's an Amateurs League: Entering the 2011 season, 16 of the 32 NFL head coaches have never won a playoff game.

Well, every year there are 11 playoff games. There will be between 4 and 8 teams that win those 11 games, usually probably either 6 or 7 (considering the wild card winners rarely fare well against the top 2 seeds who had a first round bye). Many teams do well season after season (such as the Colts, or should I say the Aslans) so over the course of any 5 year stretch you might have.... geez, I don't know, somewhere around 20 different teams that win playoff games (none of which are the Bills). Coaches turn over pretty quickly. So what I'm trying to say is that if you're shocked that half of all coaches have never won a playoff game at any certain point in time, you're a fucking dope.

Sci-Fi Update:

Finally!

The science fiction scene on television remains weak. The "Star Trek" and "Stargate" franchises are no more, "Fringe" has veered into the silly, and TNT's "Falling Skies" is so lame in plot and dialogue it doesn't even merit an insult. Will Steven Spielberg put his name on anything?

Well, he put it on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. So I'm not sure there's much he WON'T put his name on.

"Stargate Universe" ended in May, concluding the run of "Stargate" serials. "Universe" was poorly written in its first season, canceled early in its second. Then a surprise: Midway through the second season, the writing improved noticeably. But the first season lost the audience, and by the time quality improved, nobody was watching. The last few episodes were terrific, building to a series finale that numbers among the best in television annals.

Lollerskates

In the finale, the starship crew decides to attempt something dangerous and noble. The characters make sentimental promises to each other, then the ship disappears into the distance. The last frame is a character admiring the grandeur of the cosmos. Viewers never find out the ship's fate.

Sounds riveting. Move over, M*A*S*H and Newhart. There's a new contender in town for best finale ever.

The premise of "Stargate Universe" was that a wormhole accident put a group of present-day soldiers and civilians aboard a million-year-old automated starship built by an extinct civilization. Though the vessel had been exploring the universe on its own for a million years,

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Then Baltimore went for two out of a PAT kicking formation -- a tactic TMQ has always thought should be used more often, given most defenders nap through the PAT attempt.

And if that tactic were used more often, defenders would definitely not change their behavior on conversions at all.

Holder Sam Koch ran for two untouched. The surprise deuce essentially ended the game, putting Baltimore ahead 29-7.

28-7 late in the 3rd? Still a game. 29-7? Warm up the bus.

And there was a psychological component: The deuce said to Pittsburgh, "You have toyed with us, now watch us toy with you."

Also: where were the Football Gods when they were supposed to be punishing the Ravens for running up the score? It's classless, sets a bad example for the millions of youthy youths who play football, etc. It's almost as if Gregg is wildly inconsistent in the way in which he applies ideas. Geez, if I weren't crazy, I'd go a step further and say it's almost like Gregg has no fucking idea what he's talking about at any point in time.

Rick Perry Was Once a Male Cheerleader, As Was Woodrow Wilson: Mark Sanchez just posed shirtless for GQ. With scantily clad cheer-babes part of marketing throughout the NFL, and increasing women's interest in football, TMQ continues to believe the league is missing an opportunity by not fielding shirtless male cheer-hunks.

I bet Gregg is one of those people who thinks women are the primary audience for Playgirl. Having shirtless male cheer-hunks on the sideline might increase the NFL's appeal with a certain demographic, but I doubt they're doing too bad with that demographic right now anyways considering that demographic consists of males.

Monday Night Doubleheader, Oakland at Denver: As the home Denver crowd chanted for Tim Tebow, Oakland won its eighth straight within the division. The Raiders will become a contender if they show they can prevail outside the AFC West. Oakland's Ryan-brothers-flavored defensive game plan of frequent safety blitzing did not stop Kyle Orton.

/remembers watching Orton constantly run from pressure, throw a pick, lose a critical fumble, completely barely 50% of his passes, and not throw a TD until late in the 4th quarter

Yup. Neckbeard was in the zone last night.

But the Broncos stopped themselves by rushing for a paltry 38 yards on just 13 attempts. Nobody wins at home with those kinds of stats.

Except the Jets, who ran for 45 yards on 16 attempts.

Now it's the fourth quarter, New England leading 31-17 with possession on its own 1 -- after a terribly shaggy failed fade by Miami on fourth-and-goal from the 1. (Can't anybody run up the middle anymore?)

But don't forget- the Saints were morons for running up the middle on their game's final play. Can't anyone call imaginative short yardage plays anymore?

In the heat of the moment, it's not realistic to expect that players will calculate that the team is better off with them not scoring. This responsibility falls to their coaches. Yet after the game, new Maryland coach Randy Edsall criticized Chism for not realizing the scoreboard situation and getting on the ground following the interception.

Maryland has 10 full-time football coaches and apparently not a one of them realized they were facing a "knock it down" snap. Thus the endgame error was by the Maryland coaches, not by a Maryland player -- yet the head coach criticized a player.

And we know for a fact that the coaches did not instruct the defenders to knock down 4th down passes instead of intercepting them or take a knee rather than returning them for a TD when doing so would actually help the team win. Since we know that unassailable fact, it's right for us to criticize the coach for criticizing his player.

Obscure College Score of the Week: Elizabeth City 49, Limestone 7. In 2000, when yours truly started writing TMQ, I worried about running out of things to say. That didn't seem to happen.

If only you had worried about possessing the analytical abilities of a turtle while not running out of things to say.

In 2002, when I started Obscure College Score, I worried about running out of obscure colleges. That hasn't happened either.

And we're all ecstatic that you're still running this exhilarating item.

Let's conclude with Gregg's semi-quasi admission of imperfection. I mean it barely counts. You be judge.

TMQ Readers Know Too Much (New Running Item): A couple weeks ago, a picture of a mouflon appeared next to an explanation of the TMQ cognomen "Les Mouflons." Striving to be erudite, Page 2 captioned the photo, "Une mouflon." Readers, including Caroline Stevenson of Austin, Texas, wrote to note that the sheep was male (horns) and therefore the caption should have read "Un mouflon." This caused your columnist to exclaim, "TMQ readers know too much."

Last week's column had a raven saying "you can quoth me" about Baltimore's need to beat the Steelers. Jeffrey Roth of Davidson, N.C., writes, "The pictured bird is not a raven, rather, a Daurian Jackdaw. Yes, it's another type of corvid, but an entirely different genus." TMQ readers know too much! If you know too much, show off by sending an esoteric comment to TMQ_ESPN@yahoo.com.

Notice how he won't admit that he's full of shit- the problem is that the readers are not full of enough shit. Still, I'll take it. And while I won't email trivial corrections to him, you'd better believe I'm sending him a strongly worded letter next time he breaks out his "tenths of a second don't exist" or "if they had run up the middle at some point in the 3rd quarter, the clock would have run out before the game winning field goal attempt" bits. Oh please believe.