The Sports Guy Corollary - can we make this happen?

Like a lot of guys I know, I read the Sports Guy's columns pretty religiously. It's really the only reason I ever go to ESPN.com (SI.com has the exact same wire stories, better columnists, none of that irritating auto-play video and - most importantly - no "pay to read" insider shit). Granted, I've never read the Sports Guy's book, and I'm not a huge fan of his podcasts, but I know people who have/are. His columns are clever, sharp, funny and empathetic and he doesn't hesitate to call out athletes, fans and sports executives - and he does it without the self-seriousness and sanctimony of all the other ESPN personalities. This (in my opinion) makes him the best sports columnist working today.

And I'm not alone. He's developed a fiercely loyal following and readers treat his opinion like gospel. I don't think he (or anyone in the mainstream media, for that matter) realizes just how powerful he is. He's like Oprah for males between the ages of 17 and 50 (more on this in a second).

He got his start in Boston as "the Boston Sports Guy." Obviously his columns focused exclusively on Boston sports teams. Now that he's with ESPN, he's expanded and covers the NFL/NBA/MLB pretty broadly - but he still dedicates considerable focus to his teams (I'm not complaining, just mentioning it - the Boston focus is part of his shtick). But his rabid fandom and unapologetic homerism are what make his stuff so enjoyable. Finally we have a sports columnist who sounds like a fan.

However. Because of his column, we now have legions of bandwagoneers rooting for Boston sports teams. I realize that all three Boston sports teams - the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots - are very, very good right now, so some bandwagon-hopping was bound to happen anyway. Still, the style/tone of his columns make you feel like you're part of the conversation - like he's just e-mailing his friends to talk about sports. He provides constant, detailed, personal, passionate analysis, which is going to naturally endear you to his teams. I just find it irritating when some asshole from Omaha writes in and starts calling the Patriots "the Pats" and saying "we" and "us."

I also have a problem with his mailbag column. The column itself is great, but when his readers write in, they mimic his style flawlessly. He's created this vast and unique glossary of theories and rules and analogies and lists, and people have absorbed them to the point that they can recreate his words in their questions. "What's the real-life equivalent to..." "the Manning Face!" "What ranks lower on the Vengeance Scale?" Personally, I'd rather read dry, straight-forward questions and hear that kind of creativity in his answers (side note: I thought it was funny that he asked himself the questions in his last mailbag. He could do that every week and you wouldn't know the difference). Anyway, the $10,000 question...

Just how influential is Bill Simmons?

Bill Simmons and Brian Scalabrine: A Case Study

No one outside of New Jersey or Boston (or possibly Los Angeles, where he played his college ball) would know the name "Brian Scalabrine" if not for Bill Simmons. From Wikipedia:

Nicknamed "Veal", he languished on the Nets bench for his first few years as the team's twelfth man and only logged in minimal minutes during the season. In 2005 though, with the Nets plagued by injuries, he stepped up and logged decent minutes, averaging 6.3 points and 4.5 rebounds a game. Scalabrine's crowning moment as a Net came in Game 5 of the 2004 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals between the Nets and the Detroit Pistons. In the game's three overtimes, he drained four unlikely three pointers for 12 of his 17 points, helping the Nets to a shocking 3-2 series lead, before losing the series. On August 2, 2005, Scalabrine signed a five-year contract with the Boston Celtics worth 15 million dollars.

And that's where the trouble started - because he had inadvertently signed a relatively long-term contract with a team whose biggest fan also happens to be their biggest, and most vocal, and most widely-read critic. Simmons began to take shots at Brian Scalabrine in his columns (sometimes to make a larger point about the ineptitude of Celtics management, sometimes not). It was never anything personal, but these occasional, seemingly harmless jabs ended up having an effect.

"What's up, Doc?"
January 12, 2006

In that second Hawks game, Scalabrine played a whopping 28 minutes because he was doing a good defensive job on Harrington, including all but 83 seconds of the second half. In the previous 11 games, Scalabrine played 37 minutes total. I should also mention that he has a crew cut and a beer gut. Really, you don't want to give Scales a longer breather in the second half when he's more maroon than a college kid in Cancun who fell asleep on a pool chair? Thanks to Doc Rivers, these are the nagging questions I deal with three times a week.

"The Truth Comes Out"
March 9, 2006

For the past five weeks, he's [Paul Pierce] been the best player in the league. Nobody has played at a higher level, nobody has made basketball seem so easy, and nobody has been saddled with a worse supporting cast (not even Kobe). During an improbable 8-4 stretch over the past 12 games, Pierce practically pulled a Jimmy Chitwood playing alongside two veterans with bad knees (Wally Szczerbiak and Raef LaFrentz), two young starters with barely any experience (Delonte West and Ryan Gomes), two fringe youngsters who shouldn't be playing in an NBA nine-man rotation (Tony Allen and Orien Greene), one guy who shouldn't play basketball professionally for a living (Brian Scalabrine), one kid who was in high school last year (Gerald Green), and someone once described as "the human Ebola virus" (Michael Olowokandi)...

And I don't think Danny Ainge is a moron. Even if he is the same guy who paid $15 million for Brian Scalabrine.

"From Celtic pride to Celtic shame"
April 17, 2007

The good and the bad of the Danny Ainge Era:

The good: Made good value picks with Jefferson, West, Allen, Perkins and Gomes ... turned Jiri Welsch into Rondo ... resisted a panic trade involving either Pierce or Jefferson ... finagled a No. 1 pick from Minnesota in the Szezcerbiak-Davis trade.

The bad: Gave away Walker for Raef LaFrentz's contracts (one of the worst of the decade), then used the No. 7 pick in 2006 to extricate himself from Raef's deal ... spent $37 million on Mark Blount and included a no-trade kicker, making the contract nearly impossible to move if Blount stopped giving a crap (which is exactly what happened) ... traded two character guys (Eric Williams and Tony Battie) for a shaky character guy (Ricky Davis) ... traded for Wally's mammoth contract hoping Wally's knees were OK (and they weren't) ... hired Rivers ... signed Brian Scalabrine ($15 million) and Dan Dickau ($7.5 million).

"Listen up, NBA GMs" thoughts on upcoming draft,
June 28, 2006

Did you know that Orien Greene and Brian Scalabrine played a combined 2,172 minutes last season? Yup. It's true. So basically, ANY TOP-7 PICK WITH A PULSE at guard or forward will be an upgrade for the Celtics.

"NBA season preview, part II" (predictions for the upcoming season)
November 1, 2006

19. A possible HGH scandal

I'm just throwing it out there: Out of all the major sports, wouldn't HGH and steroids help basketball players the most? They improve strength and conditioning, help your body recover from injuries (an invaluable edge during an 82-game season), improve your eyesight, give you more of an angry edge ... I mean, what's the downside for a mediocre center or power forward here? You know, other than a bulky forehead, an extra chin, shrunken testicles and possible organ damage? For instance, let's say you're Kurt Thomas right now. You're in a contract year, you're going to be banging bodies in the West all season ... wouldn't an HGH cycle from February to June get you twice as much money in July?

Anyway, I'm predicting that 2006-07 will be the season when the NBA joins the fun and has its first steroids scandal. It's inevitable. And I can only hope and pray that Brian Scalabrine is somehow involved.

His readers began to notice. It's schoolyard sociology - when you pick at someone (and pick and pick and pick), eventually the other kids are going to join in (side note: You'll notice that he takes shots at some of the other players as well, but it's just so much easier to pick on a tall, goofy, red-headed guy, isn't it?). Not surprisingly, people at Celtic games began to boo Scalabrine until they were hoarse:

"Solving the playoff mystery"
January 5, 2007

Maybe the low point was when a Boston fan sitting 10 rows behind me snapped and started screaming at Doc Rivers (who's been patiently waiting to get fired for the past two months so he can sign a TV deal, only the Celtics won't fire him because they don't want to pay two coaches to coach the same lousy team, so now Doc shows up for every game with the positive energy of someone about to undergo their first chemo treatment) to remove Brian Scalabrine from the game, yelling over and over again in a dead-quiet Staples Center, "Get Scalabrine out of there, Doc, he's terrible, get him out of there!" And Scalabrine stood there pretending not to hear while everyone else sat there feeling exceptionally awkward (especially the other players). Meanwhile, the Celtics were losing by 20 and running an offense that had precisely two plays. Short of the Bias/Lewis deaths, I can't remember a more depressing and hopeless night that involved my favorite basketball team.

Considering this happened at Staples Center, it's entirely possible the guy doing the heckling was not originally from Boston. In fact, he could have been a Simmons creation - a bandwagon Celtics fan with an unnatural disdain for Brian Scalabrine.

So that's it, right? This guy is doomed to be the source of constant potshots from columnists and fans for the rest of his career, isn't he? He should just hang it up and start his career as an analyst, right? Well, a few months after Simmons witnessed that public dressing down at Staples Center, he reversed course on Scalabrine in a countdown column outlining the league's most (and least) valuable players:

"The NBA from LVP to MVP, Part I"
April 18, 2007

Brian Scalabrine - Not a joke. He played 19 minutes a game before getting hurt last month, shot 40 percent from 3-point territory and played surprisingly good defense, and that's before getting into all the intangibles (great character guy, everyone loves him, etc.). The Celtics were 19-35 when he played and 4-22 without him. Sure, anytime Brian Scalabrine emerges as one of the bright spots of the season, you can probably reserve hotel rooms in Secaucus without even looking at the standings. But given how much abuse I gave Scalabrine last year, he needed to be mentioned. It's not his fault Danny Ainge overpaid him.

Then it happened. He became a "fan favorite" and now everyone in Boston loves him. Someone created a Brian Scalabrine mix (which was linked to in one of Simmons' columns) and CelticsBlog nicknamed him "Air Intangibles." A commenter on Celticsblog.com writes:

Scal is my favorite player and by the cheers in the Garden I know I am not alone. In today's NBA with players asking to be traded every day or committing some kind of crime, you have to love a guy that does the best with what he has been given in life and will play hard in any role that he has on the team. Scal played a lot more in New Jersey and I haven't heard him ask for a trade. That's why Scal is a fan favorite, because he is the person that we all wish we could be. Tough nosed D helps his cause too.

And then people began chanting his name at games. From a boston.com Celtics blog post after the third quarter of a game against the Bulls (December 21, 2007):

The Bulls show no signs of making a run here as this game heads into the final quarter. The fans are completely disinterested. They're happy to chant "Scalabrine" rather than pay attention to the action on the floor...Scalabrine hasn’t seen any playing time tonight, but he was keeping loose by riding the stationary bike next to the stands early in the fourth quarter. Several fans chanted “We want Scal.” The Celtics forward put his finger to his mouth to motion for them to be quiet.

Would any of this have happened if Bill Simmons never existed? Is it entirely possible Brian Scalabrine would've quietly played out his career with little more than an occasional mention in a game recap? Did the Sports Guy unwittingly take Brian Scalabrine to hell and back? Is his career better for it? Who can say.

Going back to what I was saying about his influence. I honestly think he's a huge reason shows like "The Wire" and "Friday Night Lights" have received so much positive press. These were already good shows to begin with, but his repeated endorsement has to have affected his readers, right? Is there anyway "Friday Night Lights" gets picked up for a third season? Wouldn't this show have been canceled had Simmons not generated all of this positive buzz? Surely it had an impact on the television executives' decision?

I don't know. The guy clearly has a lot of fans. And those fans fit into a certain demographic. And that demographic is coveted by marketers. Despite that, I'm not sure this is the kind of thing that could be packaged by a marketer. His endorsements feel organic, more like "word of mouth" (despite the fact that they're posted on a major media website), and his impact would be reduced if he was stuck in commercials. Who knows.