Dulling the pain

As the days go by, Arizona Cardinal's loss in the Super Bowl may be expected to diminish in intensity but that has not been the case for me. It still rankles, so I can only imagine how hard it must be for one of the central pieces in the drama, Kurt Warner. Warner is 1-2 in Super Bowls and could well have been 3-0, if his teammates on defense had just made one stop each in the two losses, but it was not to be.

Bill Simmons, the self-proclaimed Sports Guy on ESPN, has been off his game for quite some time now (as long as the Boston teams were losing, he was in his elements, but now that winning is a regular occurrence, his writing has degenerated pretty badly). He gives some glimpses of his former self in this semi-diary of the last minutes of the Super Bowl.

Sports Guy talk

Bill Simmons, the self-proclaimed Sports Guy, has a regular column on ESPN.com. You can read his entires as they appear on the webpage but to access them after the fact, in the past you'd have had to subscribe to the network itself, something I never did.

(If you have never heard of the Sports Guy or are unaware of his style of writing be prepared for some over-the-top comparisons and mind-boggling statements. If it is not your cup of tea I would recommend you don't spend much time on his site).

But now all of his old columns, rants, and mailbag sessions are available in a comprehensive archive.

My favourite mailbag of his has to be the time he debated whether Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro was the most influential and important actor of the last 30 years (scroll to the very end of the mailbag and you will find the elaborate breakdown).

Along the same lines is his debate on whether Cheers or Seinfeld was the better sitcom.

The Sports Guy remembers

Bill Simmons, of ESPN.com, wrote a loving obituary-type article when Red Auerbach passed away recently. I had heard of Red but did not know much about him, except for some of the major details of his accomplishments as an NBA coach and General Manager of the Boston Celtics.

As BD will no doubt attest, Simmons writes so well that you feel you know almost as much about Red as you would by reading a complete biography of his.