Bill Simmons Brings It All Back Home

Well, we know why Our Boy Bill Simmons was sans column all week; he was saving it for his new NFL column, which clocks in at a frighteningly healthy 3,200 words. It's the usual Simmons fare; we get guest appearances by The Godfather, Andrew McCarthy and MTV's "Cribs."

But of course the real news with Bill this week is the release of Now I Can Die In Peace and its subsequent book tour. The publicity crunch has already begun as well, and it begins in the place all great publicity tours for books start: At the author's hometown paper!

Simmons speaks with Handsome Bill Doyle of the about how he got his start as a columnist at Holy Cross University. He covers the typical bases — newspapers were too hard to break into, he honed his voice on his old site, so on — but breaks two pieces of news that tickled us.

• 1. Bill lived in a coed dorm with the different genders separated by a "birth control door." • 2. Bill used to broadcast Holy Cross basketball and football games on the campus radio station. Somebody has these tapes. Somebody. Operators are standing by.

HC's Sports Guy [Worcester Telegram and Gazette] Sorting Through The Slop [Sports Guy's World] Now I Can Die In Peace Bill's Book Tour [Sports Guy's World]

(By the way, our favorite part of the Worcester paper's Web site: The photo of Handsome Bill Doyle, which has a link to "Enlarge This Photo" right beneath it. Wait ... it gets BIGGER?)