bills Page 56 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Bill Simmons' Epic Battle With Star Jones
Here's something that will make your day: Our Boy Bill Simmons is playing in an NBA.com "celebrity" fantasy basketball league that includes such luminaries as Pamela Anderson, Cedric the Entertainer, Michael Rapaport and, yes yes yes, Star Jones herself....

More "Colbert Report" Than "After M*A*S*H*"
It is with much glee that we point out that the mad scientists at Yard Work — the brilliant satirical site featuring mock columns from ESPN luminaries, along with Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Guillen and countless others — have launched their first spinoff site: the affectionately named Hard Wood, whic...

Recruiting Wars Are Always Ugly
We'll confess, the whole notion of recruiting in college athletics leaves us queasy, and we're even more weirded out by fans who are unnaturally obsessed with it. There are countless "recruiting expert" sites that, when you really break it down, essentially make a living by looking at 16-year-old ...

The OTHER Sports Guy
As Our Boy Bill Simmons' book continues to sell like crazy — currently No. 19 on the hardcover nonfiction bestseller list — we turn our amused eye on a man named Brent Weber, author of The Sports Guy: Scorecard Scribblings from an Ordinary Journalist. The book was published in June 2002 by a company...

It's A Good Time To Be Bill Simmons
All kinds of news involving Our Boy Bill Simmons, kicked off with a glowing pop culture icon validation from Slate's Bryan Curtis, who writes the "Middlebrow" column for the Web mag, which has featured luminaries like Michael Flatley, Demi Moore and Cirque du Soleil in the past. Curtis has big nic...

Good Times And Bad Times For Simmons Duo
Our Boy Bill Simmons gets a lot of gruff from old-school sports journalists for being too much of a "fan" and not enough of a "reporter," or, when he does do deign to do interviews, ends up crawling a little too high up the subject's nether regions. We've never really agreed with the former critic...

The Definitive Bill Simmons Interview, By Those Who Know Him Best
Well, we covered the 3-2-1 Liftoff! of Our Boy Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die In Peace in our own goofy way, and now, for that whole "perspective" and "intelligent analysis" way, David Scott of Boston Sports Media Watch talks in length with Simmons about his place among the Boston media, his meteoric...

Blogdome: Bill Simmons Edition
• Sports blogger goes after Bill and Chuck for trashing sports bloggers. [The Mighty MJD] • In full book promotion mode, Bill shows up on blogger radio show and actually predicts the Yankees to win. [Mr. Irrelevant] • The Phillies might be pretty much done in the playoff chase, but hey, look, they'r...

Deadspin Party Crash: Bill Simmons' NYC Book Signing
Last night, at the Riviera Cafe in New York City, Our Boy Bill Simmons launched his worldwide tour to promote the release of his first book, Now I Can Die In Peace. And we — Deadspin editor Will Leitch and "photographer" Lockhart Steele — were there, because the bar serves alcohol and had some Arizo...

Simmons, Klosterman Hug For 3,973 Words
Our boy Bill Simmons and Spin and Esquire columnist Chuck Klosterman are such ideological Bosom Buddies that the surprise is not that they've collaborated on Page 2 again — they tried this once before — but that they don't do it every day, every week, every month, every year. We've always kind of ...

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."...

Jay Mohr: Comedy's Skip Bayless
We'll admit it: We don't really understand those columns that failed movie star/failed TV star/failed game show host Jay Mohr is writing for SI.com. They're not funny, but they're not really incisive about sports either; they just kind of hang out there, like a faded balloon (or a Marge Schott bre...

Flashback: Rob Neyer's Dark Days Of Amazon
All this talk about Amazon reader reviews got us to remembering one of our favorite ESPN.com snafus: Rob Neyer's infamous angry Amazon review. If you've forgotten, or if you never knew, Neyer — whose uncomfortably confessional book Feeding The Green Monster proved once and for all that stat guys sho...

Combing Through Simmons Reviews
We are about a week and a half away from the release of Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die In Peace — that's an appended title; Bill can't even resist a lengthy footnote in his book's name — and most of the big periodical reviews aren't out yet. (Our Nexis isn't working right, so we can't check the publish...

WNBA Finals Controversy Debated In Empty Chat Room
We're not really going to join the growing chorus of anti-WNBA voices (or even the exact Xerox of choruses of anti-WNBA voices, just a few days later); we're not huge fans of the WNBA, but we're not huge fans of the MLS either, and you don't see us piling on them. That said, we actually watched so...

Bill Simmons' New Book: By The Numbers
Well, we are proud to report that our copy of Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die In Peace arrived at Deadspin World Headquarters last week, and, as tends to be the case with Simmons' writing, it went down smooth and quick. It took pretty much two days to read, and we read slow....

Leftovers: P.S., I Love You
• OSU tight end Ryan Hamby receives hate mail, drops it. [Around the Oval] • Rams exec leaves threatening phone message on columnist's voice mail. We love stories like that. [STL Today • Bill Simmons finally acknowledges that he works for the same company as Mario Lopez. [Sports Guy's World] • The D...

Today In Oddjack
What you're missing over at Oddjack, the site for both the discerning speculator and the degenerate gambler ... • Bill Simmons has a sure thing. Why do we hear that and immediately think of Michael Keaton in Night Shift? • If you're thinking about going against the Bears this week, Kyle Orton would ...

In Case You Haven't Heard, Bill Simmons Has a Book Coming Out
Well, word is finally out: The Bill Simmons book is public knowledge, now that Our Boy Bill has announced it on his site. (At least Page 2 will let some external links go out.)...

Bill Simmons: This Is Who He Is
We have to say, when we saw the headline to the new Bill Simmons column, titled "This Is Who I Am ...," we got very excited. Who is Bill, exactly? Was it going to be a Scoop Jackson-esque Crash Davis rant, with stuff like, "I believe Tom Brady posters should be on the ceilings of every unmarried ...