Bill "I'm So F'ing Hollywood" Simmons
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Okay so last night I read through some of the other online stuff, and was going to not post anything today, but I woke up with a killer leg cramp this morning at 5am and I'm ticked off. So I (re)read everything again including the Chat, and I have some comments. But before we get into them I want to ask a couple of questions directly to SG (All questions addressed to Bill. Feel free to answer them Bill if you reading).
- You made a career making "snarky" comments but when they start being about your egotistical ass they become a problem? Get over yourself.
- You make fun of Tony K for repeating a fantasy football joke over and over, but isn't that your whole shtick? Or are you just jealous of him now?
- Are you trying to go out in some sort of blaze of glory, and alienate every fan you've ever had?
- As far as Whitlock "venting to a blog" haven't you done this thousands of times? I.E.- The Sports Stool, Sons of Sam Horn.
- Why do you think you are so Hollywood now? You couldn't hack it on the Jimmy Kimmel show....your book sucked (and your re-releasing it?)....and your boy Paul Shirley got the pilot that you so desperately wanted. Again, Get over yourself.
Bill is the self-proclaimed "Sports Guy", and for the longest time the moniker worked. He started his own site (much like I'm doing), bitched about stuff (much like all sites do), and ended up succeeding in turning that into a career. Well somewhere along the way he lost that title, and he lost my (and many other's) respect.
I've always lived by the principle that "The same people that you meet on the way up, are the same ones you meet on the way down", and that's the reason that everyone who comes to this site big or small will always have a link in the sidebar. I know Will at Deadspin can't or won't comment on Simmons (you might want to distance yourself now), but Will is the epitome of this credo. Same with Jamie at Mister Irrelevant. Both are pretty big in the Sports industry and both take the time to help us smaller sites out daily. Jamie is a TV personality (Cold Pizza/Fanhouse) now and routinely sets up happy hours for us DC Bloggers to meet and greet at. The Sports Blogging Community (Army) is actually pretty damn amazing. And if you, Bill, or any writer thinks that you are immune, or that you can stop the snowball, I think you will find you'll be sadly mistaken.
Anyways (sorry for the tangent), here's the main thing I've been trying to get across for months. From the very first post on Simmons (here) I have stated that I (and I think most of us) have put him up on this pedestal and it was time to call him out for "changing" on us. I wanted him to be the "Sports Guy" again. Well I think we got our question out there, and I think we got our answer. He's the smarmy dick we always thought he was in the back of our minds. He doesn't care about anyone but he's pseudo egotistical self, and at least now we know we can just make fun of him.
That's all I really want to say about him. The chat pissed me off like it did you, but what are you going to do? Oh yeah....That's right! Write even more smarmy and hateful comments....because that's what us blogs do.
Here's your list of Simmons Bashers from yesterday.....read their stuff, but remember that AA has been on this for months (and is kind enough to link): The Big Lead, KSK
4 Comments:
Bravo. I've been anti-Sports Dork for a while.
I'd just like to say, for the record, that Awful Announcing skipped out on the last DC sports bloggers drinking hour, so he may have already grown too big for the community he professes to love so much.
You better be at the next one, AA! Bama.
The problem here is that you assume Simmons started as a 'blogger'. He started an online column before blogger came to be (or at least before the average Joe knew of blogging). There is a big difference.
Reading blogs like this and others, it is the bloggers who come off just as snooty and self righteous.
the issue is you percieve Simmons as a glorified blogger and want him to play by your rules. Simmons sees himsefl as an online columnist.
You are wrong to hold him to your 'blogger' code. I think you and other bloggers also have to get off your high horse.
I actually sat through parts of the chat live yesterday. I didn't realize how slow it moves. A question would pop up and then it'd take quite a long time for his answer to come, which I assume is because he's carefully thinking and typing everything out and making sure it doesn't have misspellings and what not.
But as I stared at people's questions, waiting for his response, I kept finding myself answering them for him. Which got me thinking, for the next Simmons chat. You should have someone just send you all the questions that were asked first, and come up with answers that you think he said. Then once you're done, you could compare and see how well you did.