The Bill Simmons Thread
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Interesting talk with Abby Wambach. Never heard anything about field turf having links to cancer.
NBC started this story last yr: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/how-safe-artificial-turf-your-child-plays-n220166
and they've updated it this year
That came up when BC was trying to build a baseball field on the Brighton Campus around 10 years ago.
My point was that I don't think it's particularly something that Simmons concocted on his own. It's pretty well known and some actors have pretty much admitted it, like Tom Hardy. So I found it odd you used the word "notion". But you knew that.
I did not understand your point, so I appreciate the dickish explanation of your parsing of my phrasing.
Any actual insight into my original question, though?
Any actual insight into my original question, though?
You mean all those articles on Yahoo about how so and so hired a personal trainer and worked out really hard for 3 months to put on 30 pounds of quality muscle aren't true?
Only for Bale who went from the Machinist to Batman in six months. That dude just ate a lot of pizza and ice cream.
And I took "Google it" as dickish, so I guess we are square. I'll take the blame for starting the cycle by not explaining why I took question with the insinuation.
And no, I didn't catch the podcast. I don't listen to them much, tho I guess now that he's free of his chains from the WWL I should do so more often. I assume free speaking Simmons is more entertaining. I know he's referred to it before in podcast and columns, but I never considered it a pet theory of his (hence my question of you calling it his notion). My reference to Hardy, he was asked in an interview if he took steroids to bulk up to play Bane and his response was a laughing, very sarcastic "No, I took smarties". I think Marciano would agree anytime to see someone in a movie and your mind says "holy shit, he got ripped/huge for this", yeah he took PEDs. Think Ed Norton in American History X on top of examples already cited.
FieldTurf is bad because it gives you cancer, yet if all those headers give you dementia, oh well, that's life. The interview with Wambach is great as a whole though.
there have been a lot of stories about the little black pellets on field turf causing cancer. mostly anecdotal evidence
Well, I suppose you can still have soccer the way it is now without field turf, but you can't really say that about headers.
Probably not very much. Wambach didn't just become a big mouth in the last couple of days.
I liked the Wambach interview, but it did confirm my previously held dislike of Wambach and annoyance/disagreement with just about everything she says. Simmons is right, Fox needs to pay the lady, I will hate watch the shit out of her on their WC pre game just to hear her say stupid shit despite her impeccable credentials. Simmons' Barkley comparison is perfect.
Bill said he will co-hosting a full 5-hour show with Francesca one day in January or February. that could be fun
Did people catch the AlJazilla fake tv show comment in the cousin Sal podcast? I'm assuming it's a nod towards the BSPN-ESPN shit he has going on, yeah?
So it seems that the general consensus is that a Bill Simmons with full editorial control is preferable to the diluted stuff we've been getting for years.
What would have happened had Simmons stayed independent in 2001 and spurned ESPN? Would the guy that everyone complained was fat and happy stayed sharp, or would he have gotten fatter/happier as he built a media empire? Or, was 2001 just too early to strike out on his own and he would have just ended up as the sports version of Maddox?
HuffPo, Deadspin, Buzzfeed and others were all launched in the 2005-2007 time frame. I wonder if Bill had struck out before that with some VC dough, became an even earlier adopter of the podcast and built his base independently, would he be far wealthier than he is now? It's also quite possible he never would have shed the Boston label or reached the audience ESPN gave him.
What would have happened had Simmons stayed independent in 2001 and spurned ESPN? Would the guy that everyone complained was fat and happy stayed sharp, or would he have gotten fatter/happier as he built a media empire? Or, was 2001 just too early to strike out on his own and he would have just ended up as the sports version of Maddox?
HuffPo, Deadspin, Buzzfeed and others were all launched in the 2005-2007 time frame. I wonder if Bill had struck out before that with some VC dough, became an even earlier adopter of the podcast and built his base independently, would he be far wealthier than he is now? It's also quite possible he never would have shed the Boston label or reached the audience ESPN gave him.
Way too early. Simmons was a relative nobody in 2001— ESPN was a huge step up in terms of exposure. Also, 2001 was an eternity ago. The internet as a whole was basically a money loser at that point— a technological phenomenon without a revenue model.
Also, it's not like the 'fat and happy' phenomenon coincided with his joining ESPN. And his writing in those years— while inspired— was often ragged and needed a lot more reps. I don't see, in short, how the ESPN association held him back in the early years. The move to second-guess is his decision to start Grantland and launch a media channel rather than just focusing on his own output. His apparent return-to-sharpness is just the result of shedding all these editor-in-chief responsibilities.
Calling his 2001-2006 writing ragged (if that is what you're saying, not sure of your "ragged" time frame there) is a gross misrepresentation and saying it was inspired doesn't cover for it. His writing back then was fresh, copious, hilarious, and unique. It is literally what caused him to become the phenomenon he is today.
After that, his writing was certainly ragged probably because he didn't need to write as he once did (he was already famous) and he also had more responsibilities.
I agree, and was a big fan of his work during those years. "Ragged" probably sounds more negative than what I meant to convey. I only meant that he improved a lot on the technical nuts-and-bolts level as a writer during those years— his pieces from 2001 and 2002, say, seem a bit... I dunno, amateurish?... in re-reading them now. Whatever he lacked in polish was more than made up for by the great material he had to work with during those years— covering the Pats history as a whole, for example, or the Levels of Losing column, etc.
No. You're right, Simmons' work back when he started for ESPN was ragged. And his stuff for Digital Cities wasn't polished either. But he was young and he worked hard to be a competent writer, especially once he found his niche. For a couple of years in the mid-00s, Simmons was a very good (rarely great) writer and I think that may have been his ceiling. Which is fine, BTW, not everyone who picks up a pencil or bangs on a keyboard is Bob Ryan.
One of his more annoying habits in later years (after he made it) was the switch from the true stream of conscious reaction pieces as they happened to the "I'm watching this 3 days later after I already know the outcome and here are my way too on the point jokes" articles.
He also got absurdly lucky to rise to prominence pretty much right as Boston started taking over the major sporting landscape. Curious to see what would happen if the Pats and Sox, and C's and B's, to a lesser extent, didn't achieve the same degree of success.
Honestly, I'm not sure what this has to do with it. He was a compelling read for Boston sports fans (speaking personally, at least) before Boston teams started winning. Meanwhile, if you live in another market and root for a non-Boston team, I feel like it would be more annoying to read someone writing about their perennial champion team than about a random also-ran. I think he would have had more national appeal if he was producing columns about the frustration of rooting for a loser than the chest-beating Pats columns he wound up writing.
(I'm not saying this from a pro-Simmons or anti-Simmons standpoint... I just have heard this point made a few times and don't understand the underlying logic).
My thought is that it helped him as he was gaining his voice. Boston was at the center of most of what he wrote but it was also topical since the Sox and Pats were central to the national sports news during his rise. He would've been fine with the NBA regardless but I think his popularity may have been different if he was coming from Denver or something. He certainly would have one less book out. Not saying it was the key contributor but I think it was a factor to a degree. He wrote about teams people were interested in nationally in a unique way., which helped.
The Red Sox losing to the Yankees in 2003 and then beating them in 2004, 3 years after the Pats upset the Rams, was an extremely lucky series of events for Simmons. It did add a lot of attention to his material. Like, a TON of attention.
His writing in October of 2003 and 2004 was stellar, he captured what it was like to lose and then win perfectly. He seized the moment.
Yep. Great touch that it's only airing on the screens on the gas pumps at Shell stations.
I believe it was when he got into a snippy exchange with someone here over the then-just-traded Edgar Renteria's performance in the '04 World Series.
My memory's a little hazy on this, but didn't he leave in a snit when someone got on his case about something? He did, as I recall, praise this site in one of his early columns as a good one, given the generally evil nature of message boards
Edit: beaten to it
Bill questioned the signing of Renteria by the Sox on the grounds that Simmons "never felt scared" when ER batted during the WS. The deluge of responses was not pretty.
Though that was nothing compared to the random guy who insisted that WMP was terrible based on the eye test and that the Arroyo trade was a mistake. That guy really got crushed.
Though that was nothing compared to the random guy who insisted that WMP was terrible based on the eye test and that the Arroyo trade was a mistake. That guy really got crushed.
Also FWIW, BS still brings up the "never scared of him" bit on Renteria. I bet he's mentioned that on the podcast 3-4 times in the last couple years, basically whenever the topic shifts back to baseball free agency, the 2004 Sox, whatever
The irony, of course, is that BS was correct that Renteria was a bum. Unless he was saying he knew he would be a bum after the fact.
Haven't heard Bill lob this grenade before, but he says in his podcast today that he thinks a lot of the static about his criticizing the NFL at ESPN was because Bob Iger wanted in on the Carson project to bring the NFL to Los Angeles.
I'm looking forward to hearing what beyond useless "angle" House invokes this week as analysis to support one of his bets. My favorite one from last week, justifying his pick of the Vikings: "Home underdogs coming off back-to-back wins: 26-5 in non-division games since 1980 if they're coming in with a better record than their opponent."
I love House's conversations with Simmons, but he's thisclose to making me start a thread called "Misuse of Statistics by the Media". Because the average fan can't or won't distinguish between intelligent statistical analysis and random storytelling-related noise, and every time I hear a line like this, a puppy owned by a sabermetrician dies.
I love House's conversations with Simmons, but he's thisclose to making me start a thread called "Misuse of Statistics by the Media". Because the average fan can't or won't distinguish between intelligent statistical analysis and random storytelling-related noise, and every time I hear a line like this, a puppy owned by a sabermetrician dies.
This has been my favorite ongoing gag of the show. Sometimes I wonder whether it's intentional comedy.
Chuck Closterman's idea to nationalize Stars Wars one of the stupidest ideas I have heard recently.
Agreed. I'm officially at the point where I'm not listening to future Klosterman pods. He was insufferable on the pod where they discussed the Brady interview and was more of the same in this last one. The quasi-intellectual constant half baked dumbass things he talks about (and then BS doesn't challenge) is an act I'm tired of. I'm the biggest BS fanboy there is too, but Klosterman is a buffoon. (Is he really that good of a music writer/critic? How is this guy a respected writer?)