If you reference Jeff Foxworthy, you might be ...

It's a good week when FOX Sports' Joe Buck and ESPN.com's Bill Simmons have so clearly worn out their welcomes.

Simmons hasn't stopped mewling about taking the collar on his NFL playoff picks last week, going 0-for-4 on the divisional games. It earned him a Drew Magary denunciation on Deadspin () and a right good FJMing from Kissing Suzy Kolber.

BS: "Can you think of any two people who have less in common than James Brown and Pacman Jones?"
KSK: "Caligula and Judge Reinhold."

There is the element of "who cares? So they're big media stars and you're not," but it's worth sharing since some people be like-minded about both individuals in question. Magary also had a great point that people should maybe get past the, "I think (blank) are going to win," unless you're someone on the level of Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus and FiveThirtyEight fame. His rant would have done yours truly some good after 8-0 Queen's lost to 4-4 in Ottawa in the OUA football playoffs.

Simmons' act was fresh in the late '90s and in the 2000s, but it's become the sport media's analog to Will Ferrell's man-child act. It ticked the giggly in the late '90s and early 2000s, when people -- especially men who realized that you're not going to be young forever, but you can at least be immature -- just needed to disappear into, say, one of Ferrell's comic constructs and laugh like a hyena for 92 minutes. Eventually, you wonder when someone who's a NBA guy in his medium will stop making an ABA movie, to paraphrase one review of Ferrell's thin 2008 vehicle, Semi-Pro. It is often a similar deal with Simmons' references to 1980s pop culture, the Boston Celtics of that era, gambling, Grady Little and porn.

(Et tu, Sagert?)

As for Buck, there's nothing wrong in gnashing your teeth as he somnambulates through a telecast for the 1,001st time. Buck is a good traffic director, to borrow a term used by a TV person in one of Dan Jenkins' satiric novels. He works in television, where they take a break every seven minutes, reinforcing the message that nothing matters (not this is anything close to an original insight). As a Deadspin commenter noted, it is fun to re-imagine iconic sports moments, like the 1980 Miracle on Ice, as they would have been called by the late, great Jack Buck's issue:

Dave Silk clears the puck, it doesn't look like the Soviets will be able to regroup in time, and the U.S. advances to the gold medal game against Finland.

Again, it doesn't matter, but it's a good release. The larger point is that we are at the end of a decade, and in on the very small sports-fan scale, Buck and Simmons should be left behind in this one, where they belong.

(Buck and other play-by-play guys will be a topic of discussion today on Offsides, Kingston's most listened to hour-long sports show, 4 p.m. ET on CFRC 101.9 FM, cfrc.ca.)

Related:
Winless, but not witless ... (Bill Simmons, ESPN.com)
Always Be Covering: Unless Of Course You’re Too Busy Dissecting Teen Wolf (Kissing Suzy Kolber)
Kenny Albert Should Replace Joe Buck as Fox's No. 1 NFL Voice Before We Are All in a Coma (Stephen Kaus, Huffington Post)

Finishing just out of the medals ... part of our heritage

Congratulations are due to The Joy of Sox, James Mirtle's From The Rink and Cynthia Long's Beijing 2008: A Dual Perspective for podiuming (not a real word) in the Canadian Blog Awards, Best Sports Blog division.

Thanks again to everyone who supported this site. It was, to evoke the words of many a Canadian athlete, a victory just to be in the final, and saying that might not make us the best, but it makes us the most thoroughly Canadian ... eh?

Bill Simmons' bunch can only Crowe for one more day

This was the perfect clip after 6½ innings last night. You know what, screwit, as far as any of our lot knows, it still is.

"Over. You got here just in time for the death rattle – last gasp, last grope."

The Tampa Bay Rays would have taken it if they had been told Monday morning that they would win 2-of-3 at Fenway Park, score 29 runs in three games and rack up Boston starters Jon Lester, Tim Wakefield and Daisuke Matsuzaka. As Poz put it,

"I was there in St. Louis two days after Albert Pujols hit the most staggering home run imaginable off Brad Lidge. And I watched Houston’s Roy Oswalt stick it in the Cardinals ear ,.. And I told myself then to not forget that momentum in baseball is probably 85% myth. And realistically, the Rays have been close to invincible at home, they still have the destiny thing going, and they’re too young to know any better anyway."

A million and one people will say it better, but coming back to win after being seven runs down with seven outs to go shows why baseball is the tops. That is bits of Boise State trick-play triptych, Frank Reich bringing the Buffalo Bills back and Liverpool in the 2005 Champions League final all rolled into one. It didn't involve a trick play or penalty kicks, which tells you something about why the game is so great.

No sane person could tell you if momentum matters and the Red Sox will pull out this series, because what you saw is insane.

(Joe Maddon ... Dan Wheeler in the seventh inning ... Why?)

Zen Dayley: Travis will soon have as many big hits as Gordie Johnson

Top of the fifth inning at Fenway Park, Travis Snider, three-run home run off Paul Byrd to break open the game on the way to an 8-1 victory. He also adds a double and finishes with five RBI.

This one's for you, Massholes:



(What do you mean, there's still another game to play today? Details.)

Noteworthy

• Those among you lot who like to play GM should take note that Canadian starters Rich Harden and Erik Bedard are each free agents after next season.
• Sorry for the horn-tooting, but the weather-inflict scheduling snafus -- six doubleheaders today, along with the Houston Astros having no idea of when or where they'll play a big series vs. the Chicago Cubs -- occasions reviving a pet idea: A shorter schedule with more built-in off days.
  
  It doesn't have to 162 games crammed into 180 or 181 days.
• The Rays have called up phenom lefty David Price. This is like Christmas morning for a baseball geek.
• Mike Greenberg, the New York radio personality, argued that Manny Ramírez should be National League MVP for his quarter-season with the L.A. Dodgers. He's just as far gone as John Klima.
• Carlos Delgado sprucing up his case for Cooperstown. He's still no MVP.

Damn, the Jays

• An 8-0 lead over the Red Sox? Someone's decision not to follow the first game of today's doubleheader (had a date with a bunch of men who wear yellow and call themselves Gaels) is paying off.
• Sun Media's estimable baseball writer Bob Elliott is reporting that the Jays will have their Triple-A team in Albuquerque or New Orleans next season. Finally! An excuse to buy an Albuquerque Isotopes cap.
  
  Basically, your preference comes down to which Simpsons episode you like more: The one when Homer went on a hunger strike to keep the Springfield Isotopes from moving to Albuquerque, or when Marge played Blanche Dubois in a musical adaptation of a Streetcar Named Desire (with Ned Flanders cast against type as Stanley Kowalski)?
  
  Glove tap to John Edwards, who called that the Jays would end up with a far-flung farm team.
• Elliott caught up with John Gibbons, who says that he has a Sarah Palin t-shirt. (And Gibby was considered a dumb manager?)
• The DJF linked to an article in the London Guardian by a BBC personality Colin Murray, who inexplicably, cheers for the Jays. It's always good to get a Brit's perspective on North America's version of rounders (but seriously, Roberto Alomar was one of the "greatest short stops" of all time?).

BREAKING NEWS: Brady out for year - Pats to go perfect prop bets no longer looking like good investment

...and it couldn't have happened to a better team/group of fans (is it too much to think that this is a sign that the city of Boston's deal with a lower power has finally, mercifully expired).

But at least they have the 2007 perfect season and Super Bowl title to help them get over today's loss. Oh wait....