Tuesday, July 21, 2009

NOW THAT'S A WELL-BURIED LEDE: I wasn't going to link to the Sports Guy's column about his dad's retirement, because I find Simmons's Marley & Me-scenes-from-the-life-of-a-sports-writer excursions from his sports-and-culture wheelhouse dull at best and more often cloying. But I feel like I have to link to it, because the last paragraph says Simmons is retiring from his ESPN The Magazine column.

First thought: He's been writing that column for seven years? Time flies. Second thought: Where's he going with this? Less and less frequent Page 2 columns, long sabbaticals from writing, more emphasis on regular podcasts -- it almost looks like someone who's positioning himself for a radio or (despite all his protestations in the past) TV spot. That's where the money is, right? Third thought: it's pretty strange for a guy who continues to say that his lifelong dream was to write a sports column in a regular paper to just abruptly announce that he's lost interest in his print column because he hates deadlines and word limits.

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