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I know ESPN has had issues with Simmons in the past, but I have a hard time believing they would want him gone. He's got to be one of the bigger draws to that awful website of theirs.
Correct.
My guess is they are looking to start a little "feud", trying to get a few more eyeballs. But I'm a cynic about such things.
The Ali/Woods column was a good example of a guy out of his depth. Happens to all of us sometimes.
The Ali/Woods column was a good example of a guy out of his depth. Happens to all of us sometimes.
I agree that that the comparison is - shall we say - insensitive. The root causes behind the Ali story are obviously far more severe. But I think if you just look at it superficially the comparison isn't quite that ridiculous. The gossip media these days is a far cry from what it was in Ali's days. And their persuit of Tiger is going to be relentless.
BTW, I loved Olbermann's contrasting "loss of advertisers" to loss of income, as if advertising income somehow isn't income. And while "threatened loss of freedom" might trump loss of family, the later is certainly a substantial loss in it's own right. Of course, none of us know how severely this will impact Tiger, if at all, but Olbermann doesn't evan acknowledge it.
Well, that is the thing about Simmons' attempt to opine in this context: most of the time, he looks at stuff superficially. So, he is generally better off sticking with topics like hot actresses over 40 and Kobe Bryant's body language. I also find Olbermann's combination of snarkiness and stuffed-shirt arrogance to be pretty annoying, so I don't really have a dog in this fight per se.
Who has a bigger stick up his ass, George Will or Keith Olbermann? I can't call it.
If Simmons got a nickel for every time someone made excuses for him & his many "foibles," he'd be able to work for ESPN pro bono w/out taking a paycut.
Well, his foibles are kind of his schtick.
Speaking of schtick, are any of you guys going to bid on the horrendously ugly pieces of jewelery at bidz.com? You can save 81%!
not "kind of"--it's become a typical ESPN ploy--hire someone who is an idiot (hello Lee Corso) to draw people to watch so they can scream about what an idiot he is
Simmons isn't at the Korso level of goofy. Simmons has the advantage of being a talented writer with a strong authorial voice.
I'm not making excuses for him. But I have hammered on Simmons' shortcomings more than enough on the NBA thread. My point was that a socio-historical comp, unless it involved, say, the 1986 Celtics and the 1965 Celtics, is not his thing. He doesn't have the knowledge base for it.
I don't think Simmons is an "idiot." He is much, much better than guys like Mariotti and Plaschke.
I don't think you can compare the amount of money Tiger has made through advertising alone to Ali's earnings as a fighter. If Tiger loses all of his sponsors, he can still earn a living in the tour. Ali lost his career and wasn't exactly rich when it happened.
If Tiger has any loss of family, it's because of his own mistakes. I won't argue Ali's politics because that is not for this discussion, but the circumstances leading to both mens situations have zero moral comparison whatsoever.
To be fair, he is excellent at counting the number of rings won for the Celtics, number of rings unjustly stolen from the Celtics, and number of rings destined to have won for the Celtics, before tragically overdosing on cocaine the night of the draft. I'm actually impressed that Bill Russel managed to hold off Len Bias in the rankings.
Simmons went out on a limb, wrote a fairly lengthy column on a hot-button subject. I'm no expert, and I'm dubious he's right, but he took time to lay out an argument and try to support it in good faith. That's all I ask from my sports columnists.
If Olbermann disagrees, I'd appreciate a well-written counterargument more than a couple of words in parentheses and calling the guy a fool.
Honestly, tho, I shd ban myself from any BS discussions -- he has chops and an authorial voice, sure, but the bigger he's become, the more he manages to employ them in the service of some obnoxiously awful (& ill-considered) (& overlong) pieces that could really use an editor or 20, & every time someone steps up in defense & says, "well, come on, he writes in complete sentences, & he's not Pol Pot" or something, it makes me think of teams giving Darin Erstad money thinking that they'll get 2000 instead of 2001.
Olbermann on the other hand, is a petty vindictive little sh!t who is indeed "pious" as Simmons put it, (Olbermann appears to only know one of the word's meanings).
The Laker fan part of me is with you, and I have banged heads with kevin, when he was here, and a little with Andy, about Len Bias and about Russell/Chamberlain. But Simmons brings a lot to the table--and takes a lot off as well, as he himself likes to say about basketball players. The problems come when he mixes fandom with analysis and with the obssessively repetitive stuff about pop culture/sexism.
Most of my reading of his stuff is recent, so I can't really speak to how he may have declined. I tend to assume the NBA book, which is 700+ fricking pages and certainly could have used 20 or more editors, showed a lot of Simmons' plusses and minuses pretty well.
I don't think anybody's claiming that they are. I looked at Simmons piece as more of a statement about the modern cult of celebrity and the rise of tabloid media than any kind of serious comparison of Tiger's problems vs. Ali's.
This. So much this. Not that Simmons is so great, but he has his moments. The rest of ESPN.com's writing "talent" is pretty much a heaving, vertiginous maelstrom of suck. LZ Granderson is pretty decent I guess, but the rest of them can die in a fire.
Yeah, but he still wants to be, as I said in the NBA Thread, Kingshit Hoops Analyst while also being President of Celtics' Nation. And there's the rub. I have not read as much of his baseball stuff, but I have heard he has some of the same problems there.
As far as his being a "decent guy", no way to know, of course. He seems much more like a "regular guy" than Olbermann does and is much more likable on paper, but the sexism in the NBA book gets a little creepy.
LZ Granderson is sadly underexposed over there. Not enough references to bad movies and reality television stars, I guess.
Simmons has the ability to be genuinely funny once or twice a column, which is not easy. But I don't find him to be a great writer overall.
His baseball stuff is bottom-of-the-barrel. Combination of incuriosity and homerism. I've never read anything else that Simmons has written, so I'm afraid I have rather a lower opinion than he warrants in some areas. His attitude toward baseball seems to boil down to the fact that he's bright enough to see that objective analysis is useful, but he's too lazy to learn about it, and it makes him mad that the need to know stuff prevents him from making #### up.
You're absolutely right on not knowing what kind of guy he is, so i'll say this, I think it'd be fun to have a few beers with simmons, if nothing else, he's probably funny, amusing, outgoing. Olbermann is still a world-class jackass.
Meant to add that he wasn't exactly going for the gold during his Boston Sports Guy phase, but the novelty / awkwardness of his shtick made it seem refreshing, if not actually "good." Hindsight, tho, it's got a serious axe to grind.
I read the book, and liked about half of it. It mostly suffered from length -- a book that long needs to be organized systematically, or it starts sounding like a guy who won't shut up at a bar.
I can see that. I don't read Olbermann unless he is linked here and sometimes not even then.
Ab-so-friggin-lutely, both in his book and in his column. And he doesn't do a very good job of separating bias and analayis, which is hard to do, but I think about 75% of the guys here do it better than he does.
This is so bad.
At least for ESPN, he really doesn't even write much anymore, it seems to be 80% podcasts, which probably are way more popular. That and those dumb reader mailbag columns. I used to really look forward to his columns, nowadays I just check back once a month or so. I kind of liked his Red Sox book, can't imagine trying to make it through the NBA book though. Ugh.
Really? I might argue you are showing your own biases simply by saying this (rr is a Lakers fan). I would say he's not so different in that way from the majority (or at least plurality) here - biased, but at least aware of the fact.
Waiting for you to throw this back at me now... :-)
I don't think anybody's claiming that they are. I looked at Simmons piece as more of a statement about the modern cult of celebrity and the rise of tabloid media than any kind of serious comparison of Tiger's problems vs. Ali's.
My comment was in response to:
And while "threatened loss of freedom" might trump loss of family, the later is certainly a substantial loss in it's own right.
I don't think Simmons was making the comparison, but this comment certainly was.
This reminds me of the "whose better, Cano or Pedroia" a few years back when Cano had already established himself as a good player in the majors but Pedroia was tearing up the minors. All of the unbiased Yankee fans thought Cano was the better bet going forward, and all of the unbiased Red Sox fans thought the opposite.
Being unbiased, I thought Cano was the better bet.
That, and the Warriors will always win between 27 and 43 games.
Cano definitely has cooler hair.
It isn't? I think that's absolutely correct.
I like reading Simmons, but the creepiness in the NBA book shouldn't have been any surprise. Ever read any of his Vegas columns?
At least for ESPN, he really doesn't even write much anymore, it seems to be 80% podcasts, which probably are way more popular. That and those dumb reader mailbag columns. I used to really look forward to his columns, nowadays I just check back once a month or so. I kind of liked his Red Sox book, can't imagine trying to make it through the NBA book though. Ugh.
At least the NFL season compelled him to post something every Friday; now, once a month or so ought to do it.
Ali didn't lose his whole career - he did get that big money match against Rocky Marciano.
hmm maybe I'm alone on this. Does it matter that the story only was public for a few weeks during the whole decade?
Right. I always pick the A's to come in first and the Warriors to come in last.
Simmons has always gone for the salacious and gossipy stuff, because that's where the funny is.
Well, he's media and the whole thing is a media creation. Most sports stories are about what happens on the field.
I can easily picture a teenage Olbermann getting beat up by his peers and the rest of the graduating class watching and cheering like Brooks' character in that classic movie.
Even if this is the case, I'd assume Simmons holds himself to a higher standard. Simmons seems to be very sure that he has a deep and sophistcated understanding of basketball and can put his Celticdom aside and his other biases aside when he wants to. IMO, sometimes he can't, or at least doesn't.
This conversation would fit better in the NBA thread. But, briefly, he does a pretty good job with player ratings, but has a lot of bias-by-omission issues based on his fandom. One example we hit in the NBA Thread: the Garnett/Gasol deals. Recall what Moses and BL--no Laker fans--said about that. Recall what andrew, a Wolves fan, said about Jefferson and there is another Wolves fan over there now, Bitter Mouse, who just posted wanting Minny to dump Big Al ASAP. There are a lot of things like this in the TBoB and in Simmons' columns.
Which is not to say he doesn't know a lot about hoops, or is not a skilled stylist.
Simmons contract ends December 31st of this year. I'd put a good bet down that he won't renew with ESPN. I think he's willing to try new things, and I think he wants out from the restrictions that he has. Maybe a podcast where he can say what he wants about who he wants?
I believe he's also the biggest draw to their website. I'd imagine he's the #1 podcast there, probably the most read columnist, and his book did get to #1 on the NY Times bestseller list the first week it was out. He's pretty huge.
Simmons is strangely obsessed with the Woods thing. He wrote a couple of months ago that Tiger cheating on his wife was the #1 sports story of the whole decade 2000-2009...
I agree with him. It's not that Tiger cheated on his wife, it's how everything around it went down. If this would've just come out and Tiger would've talked it out, then it wouldn't be. But the mysterious car crash, the prescription drugs, the smashed windows from his wife, it's all a huge story.
So, why does every media person have rabbit ears? Kornheiser, Wilbon, Simmons, Olbermann - you criticize them and they are all over it. Yet, they're very quick to mock athletes that do the same. Ah, takes one to know one.
Simmons is strangely obsessed with the Woods thing. He wrote a couple of months ago that Tiger cheating on his wife was the #1 sports story of the whole decade 2000-2009...
I disagree completely here. The Woods thing may have been the most salacious, but I'm floored that Simmons of all people seems to have forgotten the 2004 Red Sox WS title. I hate the Red Sox and even I recognize that that's the biggest sports event of the decade.
Except Tiger. Because while Barry Bonds is big, he isn't baseball. The steroids thing was happening with or without Bonds. Ratings and attention have done fine without him. Tiger is the PGA. No one really cares if Tiger isn't golfing. Golf goes from leading Sportscenter and carrying every sports newscast, to being at the very end depending on if Tiger is in a tournament.
Naw. The Sawx coming back from 3-0 down to the Yanks is even bigger. No one outside Boston or St. Louis even remembers that Series.
He seems to use the same template for blogs and commentaries.
True. And I think the story of Tiger's decade-spanning rise and dominance and bringing golf to the forefront was a "bigger" story of the aughts then his scandalous demise which only was a story for the last month or so of the decade.
You'd be amazed at the details some Lost fans remember about their show.
This is the curse of recentness. Tiger Woods seems like a big story today because, well, Tiger Woods is a big story today. But biggest story of the decade? No. Is the Tiger story noticeably bigger than, say, the Kobe rape story was at the time that it was happening?
Except that happened in the 90's, mostly. By 2000, it was pretty clear he was the best in the world.
I think to the general public, the Tiger Wood story was MUCH bigger. He's the most recognizable, highest paid athlete in the world, and by a fair margin.
This. He was mentioned EVERYWHERE. Every comedy show was making fun of him, email chains, major news outlets. This story was huge. Even people that don't know sports know this story. Yeah, the steroids thing was big, but the general non-sports public kind of just shrugs their shoulders about it and moves on. Everyone was talking about Tiger through December and January, even people who don't like golf or real sports.
every scandal is like this in the beginning. Maybe this story has width, but I doubt it has much depth or staying power.
I don't think anybody's claiming that they are. I looked at Simmons piece as more of a statement about the modern cult of celebrity and the rise of tabloid media than any kind of serious comparison of Tiger's problems vs. Ali's.
My comment was in response to:
And while "threatened loss of freedom" might trump loss of family, the later is certainly a substantial loss in it's own right.
I don't think Simmons was making the comparison, but this comment certainly was.
Well, that was me. This was not a response to bs's column, but to Olbermann, and the only negative for Tiger he cited was loss of advertisers. And whether you think he had it comming, doesn't chane the fact that this is a real consequence, and shouldn't be ignored.
And I said in my original post, that the root causes for the 2 situations are completely different, it's not my fault if you can't read...
Impossible by definition.
Gold isn't a sport.
Exactly. I don't entirely know the environment Ali was in, but I'd imagine that he was at least able to take refuge in his training and in the ring when he did come back. Tiger is going to be hounded everywhere he goes on the golf course and not. Ali's actual issues were obviously more severe, no one is debating that, but the argument that Tiger could be more distracted given the TMZ/paparazzi gossip crap isn't that outrageous. I don't agree, because his personality screams that he'll be able to screen everything out and come back in Ender of Life mode...at least as much as a golfer can...but it's an understandable viewpoint.
And you know going into anything Simmons does that he is a Boston guy. Deal with it or don't read it. I'm not reading Simmons for the world's greatest writer/analysis, I'm reading it for entertainment, right or wrong, and he accomplishes that IMO.
That tells me that finance hoodlums are disproportionately interested in golf. Of course, I already knew that about finance hoodlums.
I think it will until he wins a few majors. THen it'll die down. Then it'll kick back up when Elin divorces his ass and takes all his money.
My brother is in finance, so I know what you're going through.
Still, you have to admit, the finance higher-ups haven't done your profession any favors over the past 2 years or so.
Anyway, let's drop this part of the thread before it gets out of hand.
Tiger's a selfish bastard who's manipulating the media.
Simmons is too hyperbolic to stories that interest him.
Olbermann's a blowhard with rabbit ears.
Discuss.
It may not have much depth, but it's already proving it has staying power. It's still big news across all media outlets (for example, the Oscars telecast reportedly banned Tiger Woods jokes), three months after it happened.
Contrast this with the terrible Haiti disaster, which has pretty much been banished to the background less than two months after it happened, and the Chile earthquake (one of the biggest ever recorded, I believe), which slipped out of the American public's consciousness after only one week.
Yeah, you know what else has kind of gotten old? The GIANT FREAKING RECESSION that finance guys caused. You know what else has kind of gotten old? MY DREAMS OF RETIRING ANYTIME THIS CENTURY. Yeah, my future plans have kind of gotten old-- and DEAD. Hope you enjoy your bonus money AND IT DOESN'T CATCH ON FIRE AND BURN DOWN YOUR MANSION IN GREENWICH, AIG boy.
:) just kiddin'
It could be worse. You could be a lawyer.
well this is the part I disagree with - that 3 months equals staying power.
I know that amongst people I know, who are not immune to discussing celeb gossip, sports, scandals etc, we have not talked about Tiger at all since the first couple of weeks that the story broke. I'm guessing that is not the norm, however.
That's what those CIA Black Sites are for.
Grrrrr.
GOLF isn't a sport.
The snark loses some of its bite when I can't even be bothered to correct typos.
I thought what you wrote at first was some kind of man-tribe/Swingers reference I was never going to get.
No doubt. Some are outright thieves, most likely with no hoodlumism involved.
Chess boxing is what all the cool kids are doing now. The Klitchko Brothers are the undisputed champions beyond any doubt.
It may be a sport...but, to the MSM--spare me the stories of "perseverance" and "fortitude" about golf. It's a joke. To paraphrase George Carlin, golf is about hitting a ball and then walking after it. The perseverance and fortitude issues have nothing to do with golf and everything to do with putting up with the MSM.
No question. I'd rather watch Prison Wives or bowling trick shot competitions on a Sunday afternoon than hear one word out of Jim Nantz's piehole. But golf is still a sport.
Golf fails all of these tests. Not only do you not have to run, they have a little motorized cart so you don't even need to walk. The only interaction between competitors is trash talking and the knowledge of what score you have to beat. The actual process of the game is identical whether there is one person on a course or 500. I guess you could get hit on the head by a ball or a thrown club or something. But that's really stretching it. Finally, the entire game is stationary. You stand there over a stationary ball aiming at a stationary hole. At least putt-putt golf has windmills.
The only argument I can see is that it involves both skill and strength - and thus is distinct from Tiddlywinks or video games.
If only.
That's not the way Casey Martin tells it.
Golf goes with darts, and pool in the "game of skill" category.
Out of my mind until 2014.
If that's possible.
Game of skill. It's basically bocce or lawn bowling on ice. Nobody calls bocce a sport.
Would you also like to discuss how the sea is wet?
I've got time.
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