Sports Guy and ESPN Insider

If you're not reading Bill Simmons (aka Sports Guy) on ESPN.com, you need to be reading Bill Simmons on ESPN.com. Check out these two responses from his latest mailbag:

Q: I'm watching "Top Gun" and everything is completely plausible. That is, until they start playing volleyball. Honestly, who believes that someone 4-foot-5 would play volleyball. Even more incredible, he has Goose setting him up to spike the ball. Am I the only one who finds this ridiculous? Have I watched "Top Gun" way too many times to be analyzing the volleyball scene?
-- Matt, Boston



SG: Wait, you found this more ridiculous than Cruise playing a 5-foot-5 cornerback with Division I aspirations in "All the Right Moves?" More important, how could you say that everything up to the volleyball scene was completely plausible? This was the same movie that had Kelly McGillis playing a classified expert on Russian M.I.G.s. Hey, speaking of Cruise ...



Q: At the end of "Jerry Maguire," how is it possible that Jerry manages to attend the Monday Night Football game in Tempe, Ariz. -- which would have gone at least 15 minutes longer than the average MNF game due to Rod Tidwell's would-be neck injury -- stay until long after it's over and practically everyone has left the stadium, stick around outside while Rod talks to people and signs autographs, drive to the airport, get on a plane to Seattle, drive home, and still apparently make it by about 8:30 p.m. during the middle of Renee Zellweger's women's group? Did they edit out the scene where he hops into Doc Brown's DeLorean and flux capacitates his way to the Pacific Northwest? Why am I the only person bothered by this?
-- Doug Cantor, New York



SG: You got me thinking about this one. No Monday Night Football game ends before 9:30 p.m. on the West Coast. By the time the stadium cleared out, even with the Tidwell injury, it would have been around 11. Would have taken him about 15-20 minutes to get to the airport, and since this was pre-9/11, he probably could have made it on a midnight flight, which would get him into LAX at around 1:15-1:30. And even if he parked in the garage instead of using All-Star parking like everyone else here, he's not in his car until about 1:40 at the earliest, and there's no way he lived anywhere that was within 20 minutes of LAX. So in an absolute BEST CASE scenario in which everything went seamlessly, he's walking through the door of his house at 2 a.m. In other words ... thanks for ruining the movie for us, Doug Cantor.

Isn't that just pure hilarity? I mean, what columnist would get e-mails like that and respond to them like that? Bill Simmons, that's who. Also, please read his review of the Karate Kid trilogy. Extreme hilarity. In an interesting bit of irony, 50% of the people who read this blog is an avid Bill Simmons reader, and actually sent me the Karate Kid article. And the other 50% doesn't care (that's you, Ms. Brick). So unless I add a third reader the point here is moot. By the time someone else reads this the links provided will have been assigned "ESPN Insider" status, so only people with an "Insider" password will be able to read them. Which reminds me...

You have no idea how much I despise ESPN Insider. You see, a bunch of the articles on ESPN.com are tagged with a little "in" icon, and you can't read them unless you subscribe to the print magazine. I don't want the print magazine. Just let me read the damn article. In fact, most of the Bill Simmons archive is only accessible to "insiders." They say there is a free trial. There is no free trial. In order to get the free trial you need to subscribe to the print magazine. My desire to not get ESPN: The Magazine outweighs my desire to read "insider" articles. You know, if there was, in fact, a free trial, and I found that I enjoyed complete access to all of the articles, I might be willing to pay something like $3 a month for the privilege. However, keep me the hell away from the print magazine. ESPN.com sucks. Except for Bill Simmons. I mean, what is the deal with that Scoop Jackson guy?

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As far as poker is concerned, I played like total shit last night and actually stopped playing. The funny thing is, it was a winning session. That's right, $26 in two hours. Yippee. But I played like a total passive loser. I probably left about $50 on the table due to passive play. Twice I read a situation perfectly (I had two pair up against a worse two pair both times), and twice I lost a bet from failing to raise (when have we heard this before?) on the river. That is inexcusable. There is no way I can expect to be a winning player if I continue to play that way. I think a big part of it was that I was playing against more aggressive players than I am used to, and it threw me off a little bit. However, I need to be able to adjust.

I was more happy with a session this morning where I lost $38 in 35 minutes. I played my good hands aggressively and only came out a loser because of two key bad beats (KK v. 10-10 and QQ v. KQ). I couldn't be upset about that because both times the other player was drawing incredibly thin and got lucky on the river. Oh well, it happens. I did, however, lose $15 by playing small pocket pairs from early position. That is another leak I need to work on. I should be folding 77 and below from early position and I'm not doing it. Something to think about.

Until next time, more cowbell.