“Yup. These are my readers.” – Bill “The Sports Guy” Simmons
Sportswriters are ubiquitous on the Internet, but most of them are doing the same tired shtick that they have done for years in print. Bill Simmons, who is known among his legions of fans as “The Sports Guy”, is different. He is a sportswriter with fresh shtick and he has become a hugely successful pioneer in sports media since starting off in the early days of the Web as the “Boston Sports Guy.”
Simmons is the author of two best-selling books, the host of a top-ranked podcast, and he has used his platform as a writer at ESPN.com to become what Josh Levin of Slate calls, “the bard of the babes and boobs crowd.” Ever see a Captain Morgan commercial? Those are the guys who adore Simmons most, the ones to whom he comically and affectionately refers to at the end of one of his several thousand word “Mailbag” columns, in which he connects the sports world to his many pet theories and pop culture analogies, always ending with a few increasingly peculiar questions that reflect his fans by noting, “Yup. These are my readers.”
His article on January 15 is vintage Sports Guy; funny, informed, and somehow both rambling and coherent. Check it out if for nothing more than a hilarious and spot-on anecdote highlighting the young male fixation on his own genitals as a source of neverending humor. In the piece, Simmons also described how his preschool-aged son provided him with perspective and joy in the wake of a playoff game drubbing suffered by his beloved New England Patriots. This led me to remember a similar episode from 2003, when my oldest child was three and a half years old.
As I have done since I can remember, I had spent most of a beautiful autumn Saturday afternoon following the University of Michigan football team. On this particular day, I watched a tight and tense contest between Michigan and the University of Oregon in our basement playroom alongside my young son, who enjoyed various legos, puzzles, and trucks. Michigan mounted a comeback that fell short when quarterback John Navarre’s late-game fourth down pass fell incomplete. I slumped to the basement carpet and muttered some kind of profanity. I was 34 years old at the time.
I was still watching as Oregon took a few knees to deplete the remaining time when my son looked at me with loving concern and asked, “If this is making you sad, why don’t you turn off the TV?” So that’s what I did. Then, together, we shot some baskets at a Fisher Price hoop for a while before going upstairs to the kitchen where we made and shared some macaroni and cheese.
What a great Saturday that was.
