Shut up, Sports Guy

Even as Bill Simmons continues to gain in visibility, he seems to be losing popularity with certain portions of the online fanbase that originally propelled him to the lofty perch he currently enjoys. Many sports bloggers enjoy taking potshots at him, and while you might be able to chalk some of this up to veiled jealousy, it's difficult to deny that we're reaching the point where Simmons is repeating himself a lot of the time - it's all pop culture references and dropping hints about watching football games at Jimmy Kimmel's house, kind of like an episode of Family Guy that was all about Boston sports. And I mean, I can live with that for the most part, or at least I could. But in the last week, Simmons has written two of the most obnoxious columns he's turned in during his tenure at ESPN.com. And he's starting to really piss me off.

Perhaps you've heard, but Greg Oden had microfracture surgery. He may yet be fine, but it's going to put him out of commission for a year. Perhaps you've also heard that Simmons thought the Blazers should have picked Kevin Durant instead of Oden. You didn't? Well, let him remind you:

It's one of the saddest stories in recent NBA history, regardless of how it turns out down the road: Not just that Portland took the wrong guy last June, but that the same city may have been screwed over twice. There was Bowie-over-MJ, and now, there might be Oden-over-Durant.

Okay, not a bad start. He calls it a sad story and seems to empathize with Portland...

On a larger scale, the double whammy of Bowie/Oden brings back memories of the day Reggie Lewis dropped dead seven summers after Lenny Bias' coke overdose. Obviously it's not as tragic because nobody died, but there was that same "Oh God, not again ..." feeling upon hearing the news. I know that feeling all too well. As a sports fan, there's nothing worse.

"On a larger scale"? You mean on the scale of Boston sports, the only comparison you apparently know how to make? Whatever. Moving on...

It's not like this story came out of the blue. Heading into the draft, there were concerns about Oden's long-term physical health and the fact his legs were different sizes. After his predraft physical with Portland, rumors spread that the Blazers were concerned about his knees, followed by a round of stories that they weren't concerned at all.

The most visible person doing any mentioning of Oden's leg-size issue that a quick Google search found was, you guessed it, Simmons himself, which makes this at least the third time in the last few months that he's used himself as a reference during a column. Good start. But I think what we really all want to know about Greg Oden's injury is... did Bill Simmons call it or did Bill Simmons fucking call it????

I believed at the time the Oden-Durant thing was so close, ANY potential physical concerns should have swung the choice to Durant; that's one of the reasons I kept writing last June that Durant should be Portland's pick. ... I probably wrote more words arguing Durant's case than anything I've ever written for ESPN.com.

More GMs should really make decisions for their franchise's future based on the number of words Bill Simmons writes on ESPN.com. Don't you think?

Just don't tell me Greg Oden was the safe pick of the 2007 NBA draft. Two months ago, I wrote Durant was "the surest thing to come into the league since Jordan. Barring injury, he's going to be the league's next dominant forward."

Hindsight is 20/20. It's not like Simmons called the microfracture surgery - although even if he had, this all-but-gloating about being "right" about what Portland should have done would be even more distasteful. What happens to this argument if Durant doesn't materialize as promised, though? The only true advantage Simmons has right now is that his guy is going to be playing this year - but remember, this is a guy who was once fired up because the Celtics drafted Joe Forte.

That's what the Portland Trail Blazers passed up June 28, 2007. I thought it would haunt them some day. ... I just didn't know it would haunt them so soon.

You are a real son of a bitch. "Nailed the haunting! Totally nailed it!"

As annoyed as the Oden column made me, though, it was nothing next to this week's "Boston Blog," the most unapologetic piece of homer whining ever posted on any professional website in history.

Thanks to CameraGate, the Jets were handed a free pass for getting creamed in Week 1. On Sunday night, the Chargers were given a similar free pass by NBC. Since the network already had its story line in place -- "San Diego seeks revenge against the lying and cheating Patriots!!!" -- it couldn't deviate from that story for three hours, even as the Pats were slapping together one of the most dominating performances in a ballyhooed regular-season game in recent memory.

On the one hand, I kind of agree: the fact that the Patriots manhandled San Diego is a pretty big story, "CameraGate" or no. On the other hand, the fact remains that the Patriots broke league rules, and I'm not sure why you think that there was any reason this could or should have gone unmentioned. Did they stick to it too long? I don't know, maybe. What's that? You've got something crazy you want to say?

Is there a chance -- just a chance -- Belichick has gotten a little paranoid in his old age, and since an undermanned Jets team played them closely in all three Pats-Jets games last season, he spent the spring and summer wondering if Mangini had figured out a way to steal their signals, so he decided to tape their coaches in Week 1 to see if that was true? And then he got caught?

Uh. What? What the fuck are you talking about? First of all, there was that thing with the Packers, and while that looks from the story like it may have been more innocent, who knows? Also, the implication behind Simmons' story here is that this was the first and only time the Patriots had ever taped the other team. If that's true, how could Mangini have known to tip off league officials as so many are suggesting he did? This is possibly the lamest homering we've ever seen. Simmons loves piling on Boston teams when they aren't doing well, but anything that has even the glimmer of tainting his beloved Patriots dynasty and he's foaming at the mouth, coming up with wild conspiracy theories to lessen the blow. Pathetic. But wait! There's more!

Watching football at a buddy's house on Sunday in Southern California, my friend Hench and I endured roughly 2,675 cheater-related jokes over seven hours. We can't fight back. There's no way to fight back. If the roles were reversed, I'd be cracking the same jokes. Believe me.

But since they've already paid a steep penalty for a one-time indiscretion, can we move on with the 2007 NFL season, please?

First of all, "one-time indiscretion." But whatever. I call total bullshit on the idea that you would let this go if it were anyone else - say, if the Colts had been caught taping the Pats? It would get mentioned next to the Colts' name in every column he wrote on the NFL between now and the end of time. Guaranteed.

So save me the moral indignation about CameraGate. The whole world is screwed up.

This is part of a long rant, the point of which appears to be that we shouldn't care that the Patriots cheated in a sporting event because there are things in the world more important than sporting events. Yes, there are, Bill. But - and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news here - you don't write about them. You, and most of the people you watch on television, are sports journalists (though I use the word loosely in your case). You and they are paid to watch and comment on sports. And the Patriots story was the biggest sports story of the week. Sorry. It was. I didn't see it leading CNN's evening newscast, though maybe I just wasn't looking. But I don't think anyone was making the mistake you seem to be accusing us of. It's a lame, gutless excuse to try and foist this whole thing off by changing the subject. Stick with "How much help could it have been anyway?" or something like that - it's still lame, but at least it's not disingenuous.

Speaking of disingenuous, here's Simmons and Aaron Schatz on the topic of cheating in football:

Simmons: Merriman had a positive steroids test last year? Whaaaaaaaat??? I thought LaDainian "I stole Lawrence Taylor's nickname" Tomlinson just told us the Patriots were the cheaters. I'm so confused. The next thing you're going to tell me is that Luis Castillo failed a steroids test right before the 2005 draft or something.

Schatz: I loved how Tomlinson told reporters today that the Patriots' motto is "if you're not cheating, you're not trying." What's Shawne Merriman's motto?

I'm not a fan of Merriman either. And Tomlinson does come off a bit whiny. But I enjoy how the start of the column in question paid lip service to the idea that Patriots fans are just as upset as anyone else, and then immediately launched into excuses and deflection. God. Enough. You like the Patriots. We allllll get it. I'm just glad that we managed to get a little break in this season as an alternative to the 17 straight weeks of Patriots fawning we'd have received otherwise. At least the CameraGate columns were annoying enough to get me interested.

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Jury don'ty

I had jury duty today. I'm pretty sure it's safe to tell you that, given what transpired.

6:30 am: Get up.

7:30 am: Start driving out to Rolling Meadows. Why the hell did I have to drive all the way to Rolling Meadows? Because apparently Cook County has some dividing line in the middle of the city (I've heard it's Roosevelt Road) and if you live anywhere in the county north of that, you can be assigned to any of the "northern" courts, which include the Daley Center, Skokie, and yes, Rolling Meadows. I wasn't the only person there from Chicago, either.

8:30 am: I-90 traffic cleared up after O'Hare and I ended up making reasonable time, so I was one of the first people there; in fact, the room wasn't even unlocked yet when I arrived. I went in, got my number, and sat down with "The Illustrated Pepys" (a book I must have gotten for some class in college that I ended up dropping, which I dug out of my room this morning while searching for something to take with me). By the way, Samuel Pepys? Kind of an asshole.

9:00 am: We watch a video clearly produced in the late 1980s (oh, the hair on those women) and starring Lester Holt (then an anchor for the local CBS News) as the token "local broadcast guy we hired to have someone who'd been in front of a camera before." Meanwhile, the first court call comes and goes with no court requesting jurors.

10:30 am: Second court call. No court requests jurors. There must have been a lot of guilty pleas going down today.

11:30 am: With an hour having passed since the second call and no juror requests, we are dismissed for lunch with instructions to be back by 1:30 for the third call. Yeah - after just three hours of sitting (less for those who didn't arrive early), it's a two-hour lunch break! I drive over to Randhurst and hit the food court; the mall was looking pretty dead (though of course it was noon on a Tuesday) and the food court was actually kind of crappy. I had lunch at an off-brand express Chinese place which made me understand why Panda Express is so popular. Also, I'm guessing that food court doesn't see a lot of action in more ways than one - there was still a large mall-stand poster up for In the Mix, the movie starring Usher which came out November 23. 2005. To complete the lunch break, I drove past the former spot of Twin Links, the preferred mini golf spot for Drew and me before it closed last August. It's now a spanking-new and as-yet-uninhabited medical office building. Sad.

12:30 pm: With nothing else to do, I cut the lunch break in half and go back to the jury room.

1:30 pm: Third and final court call. No courts request jurors.

2:30 pm: An hour having passed since the final call, it is assumed that no courts need jurors. We're given our $17.20 checks and released. Oddly, it ends up taking me longer to get home than it did to get in, due to traffic. Tired, I forego trying to make it in for a couple hours of work (I got paid not to go anyway).

And that's it! On the plus side, I got money (albeit a very tiny amount and it basically just covers transportation and lunch expenses when you get down to it) for doing nothing but reading and I got a random day off work, which honestly I kind of needed mentally right now. And I also won't have to get called again for at least a year, and usually it's more like every three years unless you're spectacularly unlucky.

In other news, Mother Nature apparently decided summer was over. We're into the "high 70, low 50" part of the year where it gets obnoxiously cold at night and never really warms up either. On the one hand, the apartment is finally cooling off; on the other hand, my room still turns into a furnace as soon as I close the door. Always a fun time.

Bloody Sunday

It was another great Saturday - Cubs won, NU won in dramatic fashion, Michigan and ND got skunked, etc. - but the weekend ended with a pretty lousy Sunday, at least in the sports world. The Cubs got thumped (thanks, Trachsel) and the Bears' offense barely even showed up. Plus I gambled on being able to get Adrian Peterson one round late in fantasy football and Nemo snapped him up two picks ahead of me.

Not much else to talk about, really. The Cubs are driving me crazy but that's a matter for the Cubs blog. Today, I just noticed, was 3 2/3 years for me and Alma, but it's not like we really pay attention to anything other than halves at this point. That's the beauty of being together this long; you're not obligated to remember every single month. Heh.

Schadenfootball

Although my favorite sports moments revolve around my teams winning, as of course they would, there is a part of me that is made almost as happy seeing teams that I don't like lose, especially in humiliating fashion. Many of my biggest schadenfreude moments over the years have involved the Yankees (2001 World Series, 2004 ALCS, 1995, 2002, 2005, and 2006 ALDS), but the easiest place to mine such moments is in college sports, where there are a number of schools that I just love to see lose because they've been obnoxiously successful throughout history and have fanbases that reflect that.

With that in mind, today has to be one of the greatest days for me as a college football fan, ever. The only better ones that come directly to mind: NU beating Wisconsin in 2000; NU beating Michigan in 2000; NU beating Ohio State in 2004... that might be it. There have certainly been other great schadenfreude games - the 2001 Fiesta Bowl, anyone? - but to have two major ones in one day, combined with a Northwestern win? Let's recap.

Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32

There are like 17 crazy great things about this one, but let's start with the three most obvious:
1) Michigan was ranked #5
2) Michigan was at home
3) A I-AA team had never beaten a ranked I-A opponent ever

People have been calling this the biggest upset in college football history. Usually this ends up being major hyperbole, but it's possible, although most of that would be due to the division status. I'm sure there's been a case of some terrible team upsetting a ranked team, and the two-time defending I-AA national champion is, realistically, probably at least a mediocre I-A team. And since it's the first game of the season, it may turn out that Michigan's ranking was unjustified. But it's still a pretty big deal, and might at least make football factories think twice about scheduling I-AA "cupcakes" in the future.

Georgia Tech 33, Notre Dame 3

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Worst season-opening loss by ND in school history. At home. Nuff said.

The sports year may yet disappoint me - God knows the Cubs are trying - but this was a pretty good start to the football part of it. The 27-0 win by NU (albeit over a I-AA Northeastern team) makes things even sweeter.