By April MacIntyre Dec 30, 2007, 1:00 GMT
Bill Simmons is an ESPN columnist who has built a rabid following; the Bostonian native is known for marrying sports fact, opinion and pop culture trivia.
Simmons perspective is written from the viewpoint of a fan rather than an objective journalist. His book, “Now I Can Die in Peace” is his ode to the long suffering Boston Red Sox who recently busted the curse of the Babe (Ruth).
His own sales pitch from the ESPN website goads his readers, “but you can find the paperback in any bookstore, or you can order it on Amazon.com for a measly 10 bucks. So get the thing already. Come on. I don't ask for much.”
Simmons added a whole new perspective to his 2007 column. Simmons had his long suffering “sports gal” wife to have her say in the wide world of sports.
According to Simmons: “Now I'm wondering: Can I even pick games better than someone who doesn't know ANYTHING? That's why I'm adding a wrinkle to this year's picks column: Every week, we're running a related story with picks from someone in my life who doesn't follow football. At first, I considered having a different handicapper each week -- in Week 1, my mom; in Week 2, my stepmother; in Week 3, Jimmy Kimmel; in Week 4, the foreign guy who runs my neighborhood newsstand -- but having that many would be too confusing. I needed to settle on one. And since she started this whole mess, why not the Sports Gal?”
Simmons shared that his sports picking spouse “knows nothing about football. More importantly, she hates football. She's been counting down the weeks to the 2006 season the same way somebody looks forward to hernia surgery.”
ESPN.com ran her commentary alongside Simmons, with conditions:
“Along with her picks, she gets one paragraph to rant about something each week.
And I can't edit it. In fact, nobody can edit it….Her exact words were, "You've been making up quotes from me ever since we started dating, I want complete creative control."
“We struck a deal and that was that. Her picks will run in a sidebar near the end of this column. My picks will run below like always. May the best spouse win.”
Well, the "Sports Gal" cleaned Simmons clock when it came to predictions.
"Bill told me I could take off the final week of the season, go 0-for-whatever and still beat him even if he picked every game correctly. I looked up the records and, sure enough, I'm leading him by 17 wins with 16 games remaining. I thought this was really funny and demanded to write his 'picks' column this week. He agreed, although he probably loved the chance to skip writing so he could spend time on more important stuff, like watching NBA games that happened in 1985, or sending taunting e-mails about his latest League of Dorks championship," writes the "Sports Gal", gloating in her victory.
The "Sports Gal" talks about how she even surprised herself with her accuracy:
"I also don't get how I'm doing so well at picking these games. For the first two months of the season, I was pregnant and angry and feeling like one of those bouncy castles they have at kids' birthday parties. Then I passed a 9-pound human being out of my body. Then I didn't sleep for the next seven weeks and had to feed that same baby for 24 hours a day except for the 13.2 minutes per day he doesn't eat. I have probably seen a total of six minutes of football and never turn on ESPN because I'm always afraid two sportswriters yelling at each other are going to make one of my kids cry. After 16 straight weeks of not watching football, then finding out at the end of every weekend that my picks had beaten Bill's picks, I came to realize that it's an advantage not to know anything and continue to ignore all things 'football.' "
Will ESPN be offering the "Sports Gal" her own column?
"Still, it's been nice to trounce him this season and humiliate him on a famous sports Web site...What kills him is that he knows how little thought I put into my picks..."
To find out who the "Sports Gal" picks: click here
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