MY TAKE ON BLOGS VS. THE SPORTS GUY

by Davey, Blown Coverage

Yesterday Jacob dropped an interesting post over here where he asked some EC bloggers and Awful Announcing their opinions on the Sports Guy. I had my response nicely typed out but since I'm too busy amounting to nothing, I forgot to mail it to Jacob and as a result I'm just going to give my take over here.

In between the bloggers that gave their two cents about Simmons, it does not surprise me that they read him less compared to back in the day. The Simmons hate runs pretty deep among the "bloggers" and I guess it's something that I can understand. He's a "homer", his teams are suddenly successful therefor giving him a sudden sense of entitlement and like AA said, he maybe writes one column a day and can't really keep up with the likes of Deadspin, With Leather etc etc.

Now, here's the thing I have with Simmons. Sometimes he works on my nerves, sometimes I admire him, sometimes I want to piss on his forehead, but I'll admit that I mostly enjoy reading his stuff. Those who know me know that little fact. I look forward to his columns, I bought "Now I can die in peace" and I even listen to the podcasts. Think of me what you will, it's just the way it is.

His writing can be smug, it can be whiny, it can be filled with annoying pop-culture references, it can be a 4000 word piece on why the Vegas Airport sucks...and while a lot of people out there want to stab the man with a trident, you have to admit that he has a pretty sweet gig.

If someone at Espn offered you a chance to write a weekly column and you could just sit there and harp on your favorite team, wouldn't you take it? The man basically writes for Espn the Magazine, writes his online column, now he's doing more of a blogging thing, has his own "Sports Guy" department on Page 2 and even gets to do podcasts where he spends 20 minutes talking about accomplishments while playing the Madden video game.

I dunno, I may be in the minority here, but if I was offered that deal, I'd take it quicker than Tank Johnson can pull a gun on you. Maybe I'm weird, maybe my mother did drugs during the pregnancy, maybe I need to get hit in the face with a tire iron, but getting paid by a major website to basically complain about my team and talk betting lines with my buddy sounds pretty sweet to me.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I agree with everything he writes because I don't. I also have those moments where I want to physically hurt the man (like when he went out of his way to bash the state of Florida), but the point is that I'm usually entertained by his stuff and admire the little shindig he has built for himself.

Admiring his career progression and being usually entertained does not make a hardcore fan, so please don't accuse me of that. But there you have it. I'm one of the few in this "blogger world" that can stomach this man and his antics and make of that what you will. And while I thoroughly understand the bashing, and usually get a good laugh from the people that want to destroy his face....at the end of the day I still open Page 2 to see if a new column is up.