ESPN--no doubt trying to catch on to this crazy blogging thing--casts the role of Rose Bowl liveblogger as...Bill Simmons, a man with naught but contempt for the college game. Capital work, boys! He responds to the challenge by cracking on the game and devoting as much text to the ABC promos as he does to the game, working in the requisite groan-worthy 90210 references and tossing off the assignment like it was the Outdoor Games dog-leap competition.
It's excruciating. A sample:
Note: I loved watching the Monday Bowl games, where the No. 9 team was battling the No. 12 team, and people were pretending that this was even remotely interesting. Oooooooh, if they lose, they could drop from No. 9 to No. 14 for the season! Who cares? Does anyone even keep track of this stuff?
We do, Bill. It doesn't make sense, but neither does caring about the NBA or watching 90210. It's the vestiges of something called "being regional," which you may understand if we put it this way--it's paying attention to events occurring outside of the Boston metropolitan area and watching a few new shows, reading a few new books, and dropping the horrifically clumsy hip-hop references thrown into ward off the creaking obsolescence of your writing, even though you live in L.A. now and should be picking up some new material.
Stay away from THE GAME, Bill. We'll stay away from the Darko jokes and writing the phrase "(Insert Name Here) Face." Deal? Great.