ESPN just linked here referencing this story. Not sure why they didn't link to that story directly. If you'll click through, you'll see it's a Bill Simmons quotation. What comes around, goes around, in a good way.

I'm very pleased that this show was picked up for 2 more seasons. Season 3 was better than season 2, it was less rushed and less forced. And now, think of the drama available now that loyalties have been split.

Bonus Linkb: Here's the Friday Night Lights creator, Peter Berg, on the BS Report with Bill Simmons.

What is it, Malcolm Gladwell Week on Unlikely Words? Bill Simmons just put up a 3 part email discussion (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), check it out if you want to say goodbye to your morning. Not sure if this is a resurrection of the Curious Guy feature Simmons used to do a couple years ago, but if you want to say goodbye to tomorrow as well, here are the other Curious Guy discussions.

NBA Commissioner David Stern and Bill Simmons

Bill Simmons and Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban

Curt Schilling and Bill Simmons

Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman Part 1 and Part 2

Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons Part 1 and Part 2

Bill Simmons and the Screenwriters of 'Rounders, Brian Koppelman and David Levien and Part 2

The OC Creator Josh Schwartz and Bill Simmons

Update: And just like that it appears that the happy magic is over. All 30 lives have been extinguished.

If you go to ESPN.com and enter in the Konami Code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, b, a enter), you'll get unicorns. Lots of them. This is amazing. It felt good to use the Contra Code again, though I think I got less than 30 unicorns.



A couple years ago you could log into ESPN Insiders by using the first name of a 2 name college as the user name and the second name as the pass word, for instance Login: Boston Password: College. I don't know if that was a feature, a bug, or user error, but it doesn't happen anymore.

Via Twitter

Also in the Bill Simmons Mailbag I mentioned yesterday, a Bettors Explanation of the economic crisis. By accident.

You just reminded me of something: There should be a section on eBay that allows the auctioning of enticing future bets. For instance, a few weeks before the NBA season, I placed $300 on 15-to-1 odds that Cleveland would win the 2009 NBA title. Those odds have dropped to 2-to-1. Not that I would (after all, Cleveland is going to win the 2009 NBA title), but shouldn't I have the option to sell that $300 ticket on eBay? What if someone bid $1,200 on it (which would be a smart move because, again, Cleveland is going to win the NBA title) and I was guaranteed a $900 return on my investment? Should I take the money? This would be a fun Web site, you have to admit. And if eBay can't do it, then why couldn't the casinos themselves build a Web site that allows people to sell future tickets and get a second cut on the action? It all makes too much sense.

And then he gets called on it in part 2 of the mailbag.

Q: Just got done reading Part 1 of your mailbag. While your idea of auctioning off Vegas bets sounds like a great idea, do you realize that you just suggested the same scenario that ruined the mortgage industry and the entire economy?
-- Tom, Pittsburgh

SG: Time for the greatest three-word comeback of all-time when you don't have a comeback ... yeah, but still!

Some basketball fans will argue that shooting 33% from behind the 3-point line is the equivalent to shooting 50% in front of it. Bill Simmons gets this question in his latest mailbag and chides the questioner for being stupid.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don't know why I can't stop writing about Candace Parker, but every time I see an article about her, I feel compelled. So here's ESPN The Magazine's cover treatment about Parker musing on whether she's the female Jordan. The title of this post stems from the fact that the article mentions Parker's C Cups in the first sentence and twice in the first paragraph. Thanks for straightening that out for us, ESPN The Magazine.

The question of the female Jordan reminded me of a post I saw linking to a list of players who have been called "The Next Jordan". That list was published in 2008, but I also found a list published in
2007 and one published in 2005. As far as I'm concerned, when Lebron wins 6 titles, we can start discussing him as the next Jordan, for now, it's a little premature.

Continuing the series of maintaining blogs for some of the authors I enjoy (Michael Lewis and Part 1 of Chuck Klosterman) because they won't maintain them themselves, here's another round of Chuck Klosterman on the internet.

Chuck Klosterman's favorable and effusive review of Benji Hughes' A Love Extreme:

Even after nearly three decades of MTV, we still tend to see musicians with our ears, which (I can only assume) is what the musicians would want.

Last week, Klosterman was on The BS Report with Bill Simmons (who calls Klosterman 'Close-terman' can we figure out if that's how it's supposed to be pronounced?) for 2 sessions. In the first they discussed the merits of pro sports (Simmons) vs college sports (Klosterman) and the second where they discussed newspapers, popularity and tenure.

Klosterman echoed David Carr's thoughts that newspapers should have been charging on the web since the beginning and colluding to do so now is one way to save them. He also pointed out Simmons' hypocrisy in criticizing sports columnists who have been where they are for ages. Simmons suggested that a lot of the best younger writers were leaving newspapers to go to the tubes, while Klosterman suggested that these guys might not be the best because internet is a popularity contest, judged by how much attention you can draw to yourself as opposed to how good you are.

Most interesting to me was a point Klosterman made a couple times that popularity begets popularity and the bigger websites are only going to keep getting bigger (though, wee Unlikely Words will soldier on!).

Lastly, spoke at the Highline Ballroom last night with all-girl Mötley Crüe cover band, Girls Girls Girls. I'll assume the evening went well and post a review if I see one.

Some folks went after Peter Gammons last week for softballing A-Rod some questions during his first interview after it was revealed he had taken performance enhancing drugs.

In a note from the ESPN ombudsman Gammon says Rodriguez spilled more than was expected and at that point, Gammons wanted to keep him talking.

Gammons told me, as well as other interviewers, that he was stunned by Rodriguez's admission that he had taken banned substances for three years.

"When I talked informally with Alex the night before," Gammons said, "I got the impression he was going to say whatever he tested positive for in 2003 was related to prescription drugs he had taken for a back injury in spring training."

People also busted on Gammons for not defending fellow journalist Selena Roberts from A-Rod's spurious attacks that A-Rod later apologized for.

...Gammons said he regrets not challenging Rodriguez when he mounted an attack on Roberts, calling the Sports Illustrated reporter "a stalker" and falsely accusing her of trespassing and trying "to break into my house where my girls are up there sleeping."

"I know Selena and have great respect for her," Gammons said, "and I know a lot of people were offended that I didn't rise up immediately to defend her. It so stunned me, I was sitting there thinking, people at home are going to say, 'Alex, your first answer already validated what she wrote.' But in hindsight, I wish I had said, 'This is not germane here,' and cut it off."

(Via Baseball Musings)

I'm not sure the timeline is correct, but Bill Simmons is comparing the rise of Podcasts to the fall of newspapers. Satellite radio and podcasts already seem the same to me, except you have to pay for satellite radio (hardware and subscription) and podcasts are free.

Bill Simmons: ...I love doing the podcasts and feel like I'm on the ground floor of a medium that is really starting to take off. It's like radio on demand and I think it's going to kill satellite radio in 2 years. I really do. It's also a huge threat to real radio in my opinion, especially when people can get internet in their cars and can just cue podcasts up within 3 clicks. It's astonishing to me that nobody has written a long piece about podcasts yet. This is EXACTLY the same as what happened with sportswriting in the late-90s where nobody was taking the internet seriously and suddenly within 7 years there were a million sports blogs, mainstream sites were crushing newspapers and newspapers were hemorrhaging money. We are headed that way with podcasts. I just think radio is going to become much more niche-oriented over these next 10 years... people don't see it yet. Christian Slater in "Pump Up The Volume" is going to look like a genius.

I try to listen to This American Life, but I usually need a long car ride for it. But I listen to every episode of SModcast and The BS Report. Smodcast, with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, is hilarious and might be the only media I find myself laughing out loud to when I'm alone. The unifying theory of Smodcast and the BS Report are famous people hanging out with their friends talking about movies and sports.