It's a Great Column, But...

Kudos to Bill Simmons for a remarkably self-aware column acknowledging the fact that New York and Boston teams get excessive media attention and their successes and failures are shoved down the throat of the rest of the country to no end. That said, Simmons, as one of the most widely read and influential Internet sports columnists, has a giant hand in the over-hype of New York and Boston teams. Regardless of his writing talent, he wouldn't have obtained his Page Two gig if he were the Buffalo Sports Guy or the Auburn Sports Guy. Once hired by ESPN, he hasn't exactly shied away from writing endlessly about Boston and New York teams, which is why his NBA columns when the Celtics were bad were his best work. I know that Simmons faced a word limit with this column and he comes close to a mea culpa with his self-deprecating remark about being one of the 60,000 people who wrote books about the Red Sox after the 2004 World Series, but couldn't he have done a little more to acknowledge that he is as complicit in the "New York and Boston teams are the greatest! Or they're the worst!" focus that comes out of Bristol and much of the rest of the sports media?