I'm Late To This Party, But I Brought Chips

The Sports Guy jumped the shark as soon as he moved out to LA and took the job writing for Kimmel. While I think he will ultimately be viewed as the father of the sports blog, his schtick has become rather stale. He will occasionally get off a good line or make an observation worth reading, but there has been no evolution to his writing. A Sports Guy column from this past week, reads like an exact copy of a 2003 article. Like most other readers of the sports blogosphere, I waited with fervor for his rant and mailbag columns, knowing that they would make me lol, rofl, and all that good stuff. I often blantantly ripped jokes from Simmons to use in my fantasy draft or in my Sports Dude column on http://www.1tuffplace.com/ like my name was Dane Cook. Those days are gone though. He is the sports writing equivalent of Steve Martin, who I heard was funny in the 1970's. Martin was excellent in The Jerk and put forth very commedable performances in The Three Amigos, My Blue Heaven, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. But somewhere between then and Cheaper by the Dozen he lost his fastball- Frank Tanana style. Maybe it can just be chalked up to human nature. Except for Law and Order fans, people grow tired of the same old, same old. To stick with pitching analogies, eventually batters will time your fastball. If you don't have any secondary pitches to rely on, you aren't long for the big leagues.

Here is a pretty good critique of Simmons.