Closing Out This Bissinger Business

We really don't want to get into this too much more today, because yesterday was exhausting enough (and we weren't even working!). But we will say this: We were, bizarrely, on "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" yesterday, and not only was the level of discourse pitched higher than on "Costas Now," but, in fact, we walked away wondering if John Calipari weren't a better journalist than Buzz Bissinger. (Clip after the jump.)

That's not true, of course; Bissinger has a lifetime of work to stand behind, and Calipari is a smooth car salesman college basketball coach. But Calipari surely had similar concerns to what Bissinger had about blogs, but he asked questions, waited for a response, listened and asked followup questions. It's pretty simple.

If there's anything we can take out of yesterday — other than the outpouring of positive emails we received; we were very touched, though a few began to take the tone of condolences, as if something bad had happened to us, like a relative was ill or something — it's that two things that would have benefited both sides in this debate were destroyed on Tuesday night. (We made this point to Mr. Sandomir for his story today, but it didn't make the cut, probably because it, you know, was relevant.)

We think that Bissinger could benefit from a legitimate look at sports blogs: The bad, the good, the hilarious, the grotesque, all of it. Clearly, this was not something that had happened before the program Tuesday. And we also think many sports blogs could benefit from reading Bissinger's books, which, on the whole, are well-researched, well-considered and thoughtfully (if, sometimes, a bit purple-y) written. This could be good for everyone. Unfortunately, after Tuesday's show, neither of those will ever, ever happen.

And now, we're probably ready to let all this go. We knew it had grown out of hand yesterday when we saw a blog yesterday that didn't care about sports, or journalism, or anything else, just simply post the video with the headline: "Old Man Going Crazy." We do hope that's not the takeaway from all this ... but we have our fears.

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