“I love when people say ‘like crack’ who have obviously never done crack.”
— Ryan Howard

This is face-palmingly pedantic of me, but the entire critique here is of Simmons and his shtick, not his writing. If his “desperate need for an editor” were finally satisfied, his columns wouldn’t be his columns any more. I think you don’t dislike his writing as much as you just dislike him (which is, my god, totally…

one of the things that recently shocked me: he ALWAYS talks about cocaine use. Like, things happening “in a cocaine heartbeat” or guys too high on cocaine making bad decisions or whatever.

Yeah, the thing Burneko is failing to acknowledge is that, for all his shortcomings as a writer, Simmons was fun. It was fun to read about sports from an outsider’s perspective. It was fun that Simmons sort of inadvertently placed sports in something resembling its proper context by not taking it too seriously and by…

The Sports Guy (nee Boston Sports Guy) was the dream, right? Clown that could weave a good yarn and tapped into the collective mindset of the “everyman” sports fan that woke up to Mike & Mike, thought Kornheiser didn’t talk enough about sports, and that Dan Patrick was intellectual sports radio. All of a sudden, one…

To his credit, he spoke the language of the 18-25 year old. When he was starting out it was enjoyable, here was a writer whose joy of sports was clearly evident and he liked to argue for arguments sake. His style was fun.

Flesch-Kincaid? Ha, the BMI of writing metrics. (Both scores are “easily understood by 13-15 year old students.” Writing, as you note, is subjective. Complexity can make writing better through precision/artfulness or worse through pretentiousness/pointlessness. Or, to extend the BMI analogy, is he fat or is he a…

I knew it wouldn’t take long for the first “He’s not a shitty writer, YOU’RE a shitty writer!” comment.

The sense I’m getting from the commentariat here is that Deadspin must be jealous of Simmons because they’re always writing about him. Let me turn that on its head for all y’all: perhaps Deadspin’s authors used to admire him and are disappointed at what he’s become - that’s in alignment with the general hate for the…

Counterpoint (not that I disagree with anything here): If your writing strongly appeals to readers ages 18-25, and no one older than that, that does not automatically make you a shitty writer.

Simmons is a 45-year-old man whose writing voice never evolved past the frat house.

I enjoy sports writing when the sport is the story and not the sports writer and that’s why I just don’t care about Bill Simmons anymore.

Ah yes, Jim Gray: the man you call to carry your water when Peter King’s arms are full.

Meanwhile, over at Grantland, we are 36 hours into this, and nary a peep.

Tom Brady props a CPR dummy up in the passenger seat and uses the HOV lane.

I’m adding this take to the list.

Your list has three things on it that involve permanent brain damage, knocking a domestic partner out cold, and sexually violating children.

Tom Brady goes through the express lane with more than 15 items.

Tom Brady still rents VHS videos and doesn’t rewind them.