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Don’t read Sports Guy columns related to Boston sports and PLEASE don’t read any of his stuff while thinking that he’s knowledgeable about athletics.

I’ve had a very like-hate relationship with Bill Simmons over the years. He’s clearly a pretty funny guy with the ability to make some humorous insights about sports and pop culture. But if you are any kind of an objective sports fan, reading an absurd column like his latest today (The Sports Guy: Sore winner) just irritates you. In case you don’t want to read that waste of words, he basically says:

• “Cry, cry, the Patriots had calls go against them in the game. The refs are probably out to get the Patriots. Cry some more.” He also gives a decidedly one-sided view of every call.
• “I want to bone all the Patriots because they ended up winning the game anyway.”
• “I love it when they run up the score because I’m an asshole.”
• “You can’t hate me for being an asshole because I’m just rooting for my team.”

Bill, great column – everyone outside of Boston thinks you’re a moron. I’ve also come to a few key conclusions about Simmons:

1. He’s not very smart: even the most brain-dead of writers must be able to re-read a column like that and think, “Hmm, I might be a little hypocritical here. Didn’t I spend years calling the Colts a bunch of whiners and crybabies? And now I’m complaining about the same things that I claim they did.” Then, this non-brain-dead writer would slowly go back and tone down the rhetoric.
2. He doesn’t understand football: any reasonably intelligent and informed observer last week can tell you that the Colts really should have won that game, but they were only able to pull out 6 points from what should have been 21 in the first quarter.
3. He really doesn’t understand football: I like how he feigns expertise in the sport while proudly touting a record of 59-63-8 on picks for the year. Now that might seem like it’s pretty decent, but you can literally teach a monkey to do better than that. For a sample size of 130 NFL games, that means he’s actually a statistically significant loser.

Is he still funny? Yes, when he’s not writing about any of the Boston sports teams, he can be slightly humorous. But don’t mistake him for any kind of a knowledgeable sportswriter and certainly don’t think of him as an expert.

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