Q: Given the ‘Hail Mary’ the week before and ‘The Throw’ this week, you’ve probably got a stack of mailbag responses the size of puffy Brendan Fraser about Aaron Rodgers. But here is one more. Has he entered the ‘Curry Zone’? For example, you’re not near a TV and get a text from Sal that simply reads, “AARON FUCKING RODGERS!” Is there anything that doesn’t enter your mind? Did he throw another Hail Mary? Did he make a roll out throw, running full speed to avoid a defender and place it on a dime to his receiver 54-yards away? Did he trip over the guard at the snap and throw a touchdown while sitting on his ass? It’s all in play until Twitter can give you the answer to what just happened!
— Kelly, Louisville
You know what? I just remembered why I hate Simmons (and his pathetic, imitative, simpering readerbase). I no longer want to do this. But I'm gonna power through, out of hatred. Is it strange that when I read "the Curry Zone" in the context of the NFL my mind went to Aaron Curry, rather than the presumable intention of Seth? I guess that dates me.
Simmons, disgustingly, refers in his answer to "that one crazy Devin Hester year." Motherfucker, it was TWO YEARS, 2006 and 2007, and they were two of the greatest years of my life. Simmons also references John Elway in the context of his being a great QB, which is horrifyingly wrong for a whole different set of reasons... but I'm not even gonna get into that here. God, I swear the only good part about having a blog is having already written all these arguments about things and people I love and/or hate in sports.
I'm not responding to the actual question here because it's terrible, not to mention shockingly ignorant of history: In what world could Aaron Rodgers possibly be considered more electric a player than, say, Michael Vick or Steve Young?
Q: I just heard something that I can’t put my finger on……………Not quite sure……..Can’t put my finger on it………………………..OH YEAH, THAT MUST BE THE SOUND OF YOUR ASS PUCKERING UP AT THE THOUGHT OF SEEING AARON RODGERS IN THE SUPER BOWL! Everywhere you go for the next few weeks, every time you see replays of that throw to Cook on the sideline, every highlight clip, every American Family commercial, your bunghole is going to pucker up like a snare drum, Simmons!!!! Don’t get comfortable because it is going to be a long few weeks, OK?
— Ryan M, Darlington, Wisc.
Ha. I hope you enjoyed the NFC championship, Ryan. Hope you enjoyed the Big 10 Championship. And the 2014 NFC Championship, and the week three Seahawks-Packers game in 2012. You remember, the one where Golden Tate caught the game-winning touchdown and sent the entire state of Wisconsin into a half-decade-long-and-counting fit of apoplectic, impotent rage?
Oh, and in what sense is a snare drum puckered? Puckered means--we're going dictionary here--"tightly gathered or contracted into wrinkles or small folds." A snare drum consists of two tense plastic sheets and a rattle of metal wires, which look like this, and not like the "puckered" coils you might be imagining. There is nothing whatsoever puckered about a snare drum. It is in fact one of the most tensely stretched things you can imagine, which is the diametric opposite of "puckered." God, what do they teach you in Wisconsin? How to make cheese? Or just how to lose important and high-profile football games in embarrassing ways?
Q: When Dallas nailed the field goal to tie the game at 31, the first thought that popped into my head was, “Oh boy, they left Aaron Rodgers too much time.” Who are your top-five all-time “left too much time” QBs?
— Benjamin, Hong Kong
Well, the obvious first choice is Vince Young, the king of the comeback. Tim Tebow is a close second, but only for those of us fortunate enough to witness the glory and spiritual ecstasy of his 2011 season, in which he led six Game-Winning Drives in 14 games and came thiiis close to converting the whole of his audience into whatever religion he is--it's so hard to remember, Judaism maybe?--but then got crushed by Bill Belichick, who I guess symbolizes either the devil or atheism, depending on your perspective, twice in five games, which more or less ended his career. But not before he won a legendary Wild Card game in Pittsburgh by tossing a gorgeous touchdown strike on the first play of overtime. What was the question again?
Q: Isn’t it time we finally got a QB matchup for the ages with Brady vs. Rodgers in the Super Bowl? With apologies to Brees vs. Manning, this would be the best Super Bowl QB matchup since Elway vs. Favre in Super Bowl 32. Rodgers and Brady are all-timers. If the Packers pull off the upset, I’m going to be pissed if the Patriots don’t win. We’ve already beaten Big Ben and Pittsburgh. I want Brady.
— Charlie B, Green Bay, Wisc.
My god, you actually think Elway vs. Favre was a BETTER matchup than Brady vs. Rodgers would have been? I don't even have words. Just mentally apply all the Wisconsin jokes I made two answers ago, because I don't even have the patience for this shit.
Q: Please make the mailbags a weekly Friday thing again. For 21 months I missed you and talked about the good old days. You are the longest breakup I have ever had where I have accepted someone back with open arms. Please don’t break my heart twice.
— Derek, New York
It was 30 months, actually, Drew, but thanks, I guess (2 years, 6 months, and 9 days, remember?). Wait, did you say Derek? I'm gonna stick with Drew. Also, how fucking self-indulgent is it that Simmons included THIS letter in his mailbag? (Said the guy answering someone else's mail.)
Q: Let’s play a game called “CAN YOU IMAGINE?” Can you imagine the media, league and fan outrage if Bill Belichick had been PROVED (key word is PROVED) to have called the Steelers “assholes,” or attempted to trip a player running down the field, or accused a franchise of screwing with their headsets and NOT apologized after the league took responsibility, or hadn’t reported a player’s injury for an entire regular season, or circumvented the salary cap to sign players, or hid cases of domestic abuse by one of his players, or had a player who admitted that he liked his footballs overinflated past league specifications, or piped noise into a stadium, or tampered with another team’s player while under contract then signed said player as soon as he was available, or violated offseason practice rules, or signed a player with a history of domestic abuse against a pregnant woman? No wonder Pats fans think there’s a double-standard in the NFL. Your thoughts?
— B. Williams, Grand Rapids, Mich.
I'm actually with you as far as the double standard goes, and I frankly detest Mike Tomlin and not only because of the tripping incident. But it's going to take a lot more than this to make me feel sympathy for Pats fans. Poor babies are only the fans of the most successful sports franchise of the past sixteen years (and tied with the Lakers over the past 17). This is a team that has missed the playoffs three times this millennium. They have more Super Bowl wins since 2013 than the Boston Celtics have NBA Championships since 1986. Get back in your cave, Pats fans.
Q: Read this sentence out loud: Marvin Lewis has been an NFL head coach for the same franchise for 14 years and has ZERO playoff wins. You forgot to mention the Bengals on your top-five tortured fan base list, right?
— Steven M., Cincinnati
I read it out loud. That's a pretty bad sentence. If you're going to give me instructions like that, you could at least have the courtesy to put in some effort. Take as your example Neil Gaiman: "It was at the end of February, in lambing season, when the world was cold, and a bitter wind howled down the moors and through the leafless forest, when icy rains fell from the leaden skies in continual drizzling showers, at six in the evening, after the sun had set and the sky was dark, that a wicker basket was pushed through the space in the wall."
Or Cormac McCarthy, for those of you who really want an example with the word "phallus" in it: "They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them."
Actually, you know what, do not send me any sentences with the word "phallus" in them. Send them to Simmons.
Q: Do we need to assign a new nickname to the new LA football team, similar to the Zombie Sonics moniker of old? I refuse to call this team the Chargers purely out of respect for San Diego fans.
— Alex, Cleveland
It will never cease to amuse me that somehow people don't realize that the Chargers were founded in LA and played their first season in LA. Oh, and by the way, both the Raiders (1982-94) and the Rams (1946-94) also had long stints in Los Angeles way before all this talk of relocation came about. Speaking of relocation, remember that time...
I can't do this. I can't pick on the Cleveland freaking Browns, especially when all you're really doing is showing solidarity with San Diego fans. I had this whole thing planned out, complete with a brutal, heartbreaking statistic (the team that used to be the Browns and became the Ravens has more Super Bowl wins since moving than the new Browns have playoff appearances) but I just can't follow through with it. I have nothing but respect for fans of a franchise that hasn't won a playoff game since I was one. And amidst all my hatred for Dan Gilbert, I really do like to see the city of Cleveland winning at something, especially if it keeps coming at the expense of Golden State. Stay strong, my friend. And call the Chargers the Football Clippers. That's a curse they can't shrug off.
Q: People in San Diego HATE LA, and vice versa. There are ZERO Charger fans in LA, they are all either Rams or Raiders fans. San Diego fans hate their owner too, so why in the world would they continue to support a team where they hate the owner AND the relocation? It would be similar to the Patriots moving to New York. Would you honestly still be a fan?
— Sam Miller
This isn't even true. People in LA don't care at all about people in San Diego. The same kind of one-way hatred exists between SF->LA and Portland->Seattle. It's because we (people in Seattle and/or LA) know our city's better, so we don't have to stress about it. Now, I have no idea how the relative cultures of New York and Boston compare on this basis, but I have to assume that Boston is the angry younger sibling who's really obsessed with winning and New York is the chill older sibling who sort of doesn't care (with maybe the exception of Yankees/Sox, which is probably more even fan-wise, if a little one-sided championships-wise).
But to answer your question, no, I would not support any of my teams if they moved. Know how I know? Because I hate the Thunder and root for not only their failure, but the failure of basically everyone who has ever played there (notably Durant and Harden at the moment). The one exception, which surprised even me, is that I'm pretty solidly on Team Westbrook in the MVP conversation right now. I kind of think he's putting up one of the two most impressive individual seasons of all time (up there with Wilt's 50 PPG, 25 RPG season in 1962). He's averaging a triple double while leading the league in scoring. I think we've lost sight of just how unthinkable that is. There's just nothing like it. And frankly I will be disgusted, albeit a little amused, when inevitably Harden wins the MVP. How absurd is it that the two most dominant individual offensive seasons in NBA history are BOTH going to be MVP runners-up at best?
Q: Who is the Aaron Rodgers of the NBA?
— Bert, Manila, Philippines
Let's see. An overrated efficiency nut who inherited his role from a gunslingin' Hall of Famer, likes to complain a lot when he loses to a team from the Pacific Northwest, and pops up way too frequently in Bill Simmons's mailbag?
Just kidding, I got nothing.
The closest thing would honestly be James Harden, if only because everyone is about to use a relatively minor advantage in a few cherry-picked advanced stats to justify giving him MVP over a superior, but slightly less efficient, player, when the real rationale is because he's lucky enough to have good teammates and a stronger record. Which you would think would run against the "Most Valuable" thing, but hey, I'm not a voter.
I resent Simmons's choice of Durant, if only because, as much as I dislike him, Rodgers would never do something as cowardly as Durant did. The equivalent would be, like, walking to the Patriots to be Brady's backup-slash-garbage-time-fill-in. After losing the Super Bowl to the Patriots. Because you threw a pick six in overtime.
Q: Le’Veon Bell compared himself to Steph Curry, but isn’t James Harden the perfect basketball comp for him? Incredible shiftiness and masterful secondary skills (Harden’s passing and Bell’s receiving) that make them virtually unstoppable. Get Bell some facial hair and it’ll be complete. I feel like the only way the Steelers win is if Bell has like 200 total yards. Unlikely, but then again, Harden did have a 53–17–16 this year. FEAR THE BEARD, SIMMONS!
— Taylor, Patchogue, N.Y.
LeVeon has put up 200 combined yards five times in his career. You might just be overstating his importance. Don't forget that the Steelers also have both a competent quarterback in Roethlisberger and maybe the best receiver in the league in Antonio Brown. The real question is: Who in the NFL has facial hair unappealing enough to be compared to Harden? Is it Luck?
Q: We just had a playoff game take a dramatic turn on a holding call on a man born the year Annie Hall won Best Picture, who regularly physically dominates freaks of nature in their athletic prime. This same man “spends $350,000 per year maintaining his body” and one of the things he does is “strange acupuncture.”
— Jeffrey Abell
There just literally isn't even a question here. This made me use all three of my garbage words (just, literally, even).
Q: Up here in Canada the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes were struggling to survive until they got bumped to a small university stadium to make way for a U2 concert. (True story.) Turns out that watching football in a small but packed stadium is much more fun than watching it in a half-full mausoleum, and Percival-Molson Stadium became their new permanent regular-season home. Mark my words: After the Chargers become the hottest ticket in town, Jacksonville will start working on their 30,000-seat facility.
— Damian Penny
Ha, that's cute. You think the LA Chargers are going to become "the hottest ticket in town," when that town is A) LA, and B) still LA? Three things you might not know about that city. First, people in LA don't care about football. The furthest anyone cares is basically wearing Raiders gear because it was cool when NWA did it. Second, the Chargers are the third-most-popular of the three past-and/or-present LA teams, and frankly even the Rams are not exactly popular right now. Third, LA is just not a football town. It is a basketball town, and a little bit of a baseball town, but there's a reason all three football teams left: Despite being the second biggest market in the country, LA can't support two NFL teams. It probably can't even support one.
Q: You’re a Raiders fan and you stumble upon a hot tub time machine in Vegas that can be used only once. Do you go back in time and change the Immaculate Reception or the Tuck Rule? Do you possibly stop the Steelers dynasty of the ’70s before it starts, or do you potentially erase Tom F-ing Brady from the history books? (In my best Keanu voice) “What do you do, Bill, what do you do?!”
— Lucas, Evansville, Ind.
It's probably indicative of the Raiders' culture of losing that this question isn't "Which option gives you a better chance of winning the Super Bowl," but rather, "Which option is more spiteful." The thing is, you fucked up: beating the Steelers in 1972 does nothing. They didn't even make the Super Bowl that year; it was the 14-0 Dolphins. How do you not know this?
Here's the other thing you fucked up: If the Pats lose in the Tuck Rule game in '01, they're not gonna say, "Well, the Brady Experiment is over. Guess we'll start Bledsoe again." No way. Brady in 2001 started 14 games, winning 11; put up an 86.5 passer rating; and got invited to the Pro Bowl. Bledsoe in 2001 was 29, hadn't had a season that good since 1997, and was very clearly the second-best quarterback on the team. So while beating the Pats would have prevented them from winning their first Super Bowl, they would still presumably go on to win at least four more. The biggest thing that happens historically is the Greatest Show on Turf looks a lot more impressive.
So neither option is actually going to change history (not like, say, preventing Bledsoe's injury or beating the Steelers in one of the years that they actually won the Super Bowl). That being the case, which year gives the Raiders a better shot at the trophy? In 2001, they would have had to go through the 13-3 Steelers and the 14-2 Rams; in 1972, it would have been the 14-0 Dolphins and the 11-3 Redskins.
I'm actually going to go with the '72 Raiders on this one. The '01 Raiders had a BAD defense (19th in the league in points allowed per game), and it's fair to say that even if they'd made it through the Steelers they would have gotten eviscerated by the Rams in the Super Bowl. Kurt Warner might have dropped 500 yards on them. And while the '72 Dolphins are scary, record-wise, they're actually somewhat unconvincing as far as all-time-great teams go, and the Raiders did surprisingly well in common matchups. That being said it's a long road either way.
But honestly, the biggest factor involved here should be historicity. The point of this exercise is to give Raiders fans a chance to correct something that went wrong. The Immaculate Reception, for all the controversy surrounding it, was the right call. The ball clearly bounced off Tatum, making the reception legal. The Tuck Rule is more controversial, and I can see both sides of the argument. While I can understand why a ref might think Brady was still in the "throwing" motion, I think the play should have been ruled a fumble, and I absolutely do not think it should have been overturned. Besides, the Immaculate Reception is one of the greatest plays in NFL history. Don't ruin that. Fix the Tuck Rule.
Q: So me and my buddy Sam have had a seven-year wager on who would appear in the Simmons mailbag first. Last week I was ecstatic to see one of my Knicks points made the bag! But then he said, “Hey, this isn’t like the ESPN bag. For all we know, Simmons maybe got a total of like 100 emails for this one. This would be like you scoring with a once-hot actress who’s now in her late 60s.”
— Morris
There's a Q but not, like, a question mark, or a question. There's not even an indicative upward inflection, at least not that I can see. And where am I supposed to assume you're from, Morris? Unincorporated territories? Get out.
Q: So, a buddy of mine has a theory that deserves more airtime. 2016 by all accounts was a relentless disaster: Unless you were a diehard Republican, pretty much the only positive thing was the Cubbies finally winning the World Series. What if 108 years of collective angst, despair, and soul bartering finally … worked? For as long as I’ve known them, all my friends who are Cubs fans have prattled on about “Man, I would give ANYTHING to see the boys win one!” What if 2016 was the universe finally cashing that ticket?
— Joe, Boston
I like how you say "for as long as I've known them," as if maybe your friends are 109 years old and you just didn't know them in the days before the Cubs' dry streak.
Q: Since the Falcons had Future and Bow Wow (Ciara’s exes) as sideline guests when they played the Seahawks, what’s the worst possible guest that a remaining QB would not want to see on game day?
— Alex T.
I'm gonna go ahead and not answer this one.
Q: If the Patriots win this weekend, what are the chances that (a) Trump has the NSA/CIA/FBI dig up dirt to blackmail the Super Bowl officials or Falcons/Packers players/coaches and cause an “accident” or arrest of players/coaches (something to help the Pats win), and (b) that some combination of Brady/Belichick/Kraft put Trump up to it? I have a feeling Trump’s going to end up with a Super Bowl 51 ring and then give it to Putin. That’s the reason Russia interfered with the election: Putin wants another Pats SB ring.
— Abbet, San Bernardino, Calif.
I'm tempted to make a joke about liberals, but that risks my readers thinking I'm a conservative.
Q: Let’s say Larry Bird and Tom Brady show up at your front door at 4 a.m. and give you something like, “Bill, we got in big trouble in L.A. and need a place to crash.” Who gets the guest room and who gets the couch?
— Pedro, Brazil
Bird gets the bed, for his back. Duh. As for on an emotional level, I'm gonna need different people for this to work. Let's say Kobe Bryant and Russell Wilson? Russ can have the guest bed. Kobe can have my fuckin' bed. I'll take the couch. Don't ever say I'm disloyal. (Then again, neither Kobe nor Russell supposedly sleeps more than a handful of hours a night, so... problem solved?)
Q: The list of QBs that New England has faced this season: Palmer, Tannehill, Taylor, Whitehurst, Dalton, Jones, Wilson, Kaepernick, Fitzpatrick, Goff, Flacco, Siemian, Moore and Lossweiler. The Patriots played ONE top 15 QB all season, at home, and lost. Do we really even know how good this Pats team is? Does reading that list at least put doubts in your mind about the validity of the 14–2 regular-season record?
— John Iezzi
The Patriots also got shut out 16-0 by the Bills. I don't have a response to this question--I'm from the future and it wouldn't really be fair for me to comment--but I'm just really hoping we never forget that. 16-0.
Q: You wrote: “Last note: Celtics radio voice Sean Grande recently compared Thomas’s offensive leap to that of Roy Hobbs in The Natural. For me, it feels more like David Ortiz’s unexpected leap as a cleanup hitter, when Boston fans kept saying to each other, ‘I can’t tell if this is a fluke or something more legitimate … but it’s starting to feel legitimate … right???’” So … steroids?
— TJ Olszweski
Legitimately, maybe. I mean, "steroids" is a little naive; the world of performance-enhancing drugs is vast, beautiful, and terrifying. But when you see a guy make a leap like this--and at the ripe old age of 27, to boot--you have to wonder.
Just kidding. Isaiah was a stud at UW (legend), he was a borderline stud in Sacramento (20/3/6 with 1.3 steals a game isn't nothing), and he's been improving every year in Boston. I don't think this is a PED leap. I think it's just my little man growing up.
Q: Now that we’ve lost half of the Manning Face tag-team and Playoff Eli is dead, is the Andy Reid Face the best Face in the National Football League? The Manning Face always looks like they smelled a rank fart in an elevator. The Andy Reid Face looks like a guy waking up from a coma, having no idea where he’s at and REALLY wanting a Double-Double Animal Style. Or will this argument be made moot by Roger Goodell Face if/when the Pats beat the Pack in the highest-rated Super Bowl ever?
— Cameron K, Austin, Texas
Dude, who doesn't wake up wanting a Double-Double Animal Style? But he's in Kansas City. I would think barbeque would be a better option. Speaking of which, you're in fucking Austin. How did your mind NOT immediately go to barbeque? Get your shit together.
Q: Is there a better hypothetical argument starter than “The Raiders Should Have Always Been in Vegas?” Al Davis (R.I.P.) wore white jumpsuits, always told the league to go screw itself, and made draft decisions like he was hitting on 17 with a 2 showing. Now we have Mark Davis, a man who looks like he just came out of a casino after 14 straight hours of losing his shirt gambling, tipping waitresses with $1 chips, and offering I.O.U. payments to hookers. You thought there were some scary characters in the black hole for Oakland; what type of shenanigans will happen in Vegas? How many “muffed punts” and “missed field goals” will happen? I can’t wait to see what happens.
— Andrew G.
Yeah, these very legitimate concerns about the integrity of the league that you bring up are strong arguments AGAINST your point. Why exactly are you wanting this? Are you just unaffiliated, and so you're not gonna care when your team gets screwed by Vegas bookies paying off the punter to get himself blocked? The average punter in this league is paid like $2 million. Do you know how much money a dirty bookie stands to make by fudging the line of a big game? Do you know how significant a seven-point swing is? I'm probably overreacting here, but god damn.
Q: The story line of the NFL rescheduling the Steelers-Chiefs game for safety reasons was hilarious. The Sunday night playoff game had way bigger ratings than a 1 p.m. game. When has Goodell ever done the right thing based on safety???
— Ryan, Denver
Defenseless receivers? Crown of the helmet? Ringing any bells? Speaking of bells, has there ever been a reference more dated than Simmons's "Pull this leg and it plays jingle bells"?? It's not even from that long ago, it's just somehow intrinsically way older than it actually is.
Q: Roger Staubach should have made your “Greatest QB” list somewhere, right? Whether it’s in the “What if?” category since he served four years in the Navy (before his Cowboys career started), or on the actual list itself, I would put him ahead of Aikman and Bradshaw even though Staubach did have good weapons. Plus, he invented the Hail Mary even if it was a clear push-off by Drew Pearson. Glad to have you back writing again.
— Adam N., Orlando, Fla.
Yeah, like tenth. And yeah, above Aikman and Bradshaw, no question. Glad to be back, Adam.
Q: Does it strike you at all odd that we have an NFC championship favorite trotting out a likely MVP QB, guiding an offense that just tied the freaking Greatest Show on Turf for total points in a season, and is playing at home where they’re historically a much tougher team, and yet all the conversation has consisted of the entire media world collectively jerking off to the other team’s QB? (And rightfully so, Aaron Rodgers is an alien, I’m convinced.) NFL.com actually ran an article calling Aaron Rodgers the Michael Jordan of football for freak’s sake. Do you get the same feeling I do that there’s huge potential for a great Matty Ice/Falcons FU game here? I mean aren’t we really one non-superhuman Aaron Rodgers performance away from the Packers’ one-man band getting shit on in a 20-point laugher Sunday?
— Daniel G
Before we start with the Jordan comparisons, let's wait for Rodgers to drop out of the league to play mediocre baseball, then come back and punch Steve Kerr while getting carried to a championship by Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. That's what happened, right? Seriously, though, if we're calling Jordan GOAT, isn't it kind of insulting to compare him to Rodgers when Brady is in the other conference championship game?
Good call on the game, by the way. It turned out to be a 23-point laugher, so you are what we in the biz refer to as "wrong," but you were close. In much the same way that a missed free throw is close.
Q: Love your website and your articles. Just asking for a quick favor. In your Jan. 13 mailbag there is a question posted from someone by the name of Mike Piekarski, with no specification of where the reader is from. That just so happens to be my name as well. Is there any way you can either change the name, or put in some clarification of where the reader is writing from? It’s not a very common name, and I don’t want people thinking that I’m asking questions about actors ejaculating.
— Mike Piekarski
Why would you ever NOT want that?
Q: When I first heard you throw out the idea that every Leo movie would be better with Matt Damon as the lead, I thought it’s just Bill being Bill. There was just no possible way for me to wrap my head around the concept that there was anything Leo couldn’t do as an actor. And then one awful, sleepless Wednesday night at about 2 in the morning while watching one of the 30 HBO channels, a gift presented itself to me. The gift of clarity. [Scotty Doesn't Know] This brief cameo was proof to me and all others that there is nothing Matt Damon can’t do. For all the nonbelievers go ahead and try to picture Leo ever doing something like this … you couldn’t do it, could you? Game. Set. Match. DAMON.
— Matthew Rosati
Fair point, and I love this scene (and song and movie) so much that I won't even say anything cutting and bitter.
Q: Is there a better back-to-back-to-back stretch of performances/movies than Rob Lowe in ’85-’86 … St. Elmo’s Fire-Youngblood-About Last Night…? He’s the legitimate star in all three (even though Emilio Estevez was first billed in St. Elmo’s!) and all three were released between June 1985 and July 1986. So, let’s call this stretch Rob’s best “season.” Think Yaz in ’67, when the Triple Crown was legitimate (sorry Miggy in 2012). Is there another actor’s season that stacks up against Rob Lowe’s Triple Crown–winning performance of ’85-’86?
— Corey Leiseth
I'ma let you finish or whatever but Secretariat had the best Triple Crown of all time. Of all time! In all seriousness, Secretariat is probably one of the three most dominant athletes ever, along with Don Bradman and Wayne Gretzky. Okay, favorite stat from each of those three guys (or horses, as the case may be):
- In 1973, Secretariat won the Triple Crown, which consists of the Belmont Stakes (see above link), the Preakness Stakes, and the Kentucky Derby. He still, to this day, holds the all-time records in EACH of those three races, despite them being the three most competitive in horse-racing.
(Ben Morris raises the interesting argument that the only reason Secretariat stands as the best racehorse of all time* is because the advancement of the sport has plateaued for the past forty-four years, and that if horse athletes had kept advancing in the same way that human athletes have, Secretariat would have been left behind. I kind of hate this argument. There's quite a bit of evidence that humans aren't actually becoming better athletes as much as we're benefiting from better technology, better nutrition, and a much larger pool of talent. None of those things really apply to horses, and there's no reason to hold that against Secretariat. He's the GHOAT: the Greatest Horse of All Time. Deal with it.)
* I'm using "best" here in a surface-level sense: he beats all other horses in the three biggest horse-races in the world. If you want to do "greatest," it's a matter of taste between Secretariat and Man o' War, a champion racehorse from 1920. If you want "most dominant," Man o' War almost definitely takes it; he only lost one race, and it was basically a crazy fluke. He didn't win the Triple Crown because his owner didn't feel like racing him in the Derby; the first Triple Crown winner had been Sir Barton in 1919, but people didn't start caring about the Triple Crown as an entity until 1930, when Gallant Fox won it.
- In hockey, one can score points through either scoring goals or through assists. Wayne Gretzky was good at both: He is the career leader in goals, assists, and points. But that still sells him short. In fact, if Gretzky had never scored a goal in his entire career, he STILL would be the all-time leader in points, because his 1963 assists outpace Jaromir Jagr's 1909 points. (N.B. that Jagr is active and could theoretically close this gap, but he is also 45 and may very well not.)
- In cricket, a 40 batting average is considered very good. Most players are in the 20-40 range. Players north of 50 are very rare. Only six players, including Bradman, have career averages above 60; second place after Bradman is Adam Voges, at 61.87. Don Bradman's career batting average is 99.94. He is literally more than 60% more productive than the next best batters. That not only outstrips Gretzky (who's about 50% more productive than the next guy), but it's also a rate stat, not a volume stat. A better comparison might be points per game in hockey, a stat in which Gretzky is (of course) first all-time, but by a much narrower margin (1.921 to Mario Lemieux's 1.883. Note that there is then a much bigger gap to Mike Bossy, 1.497, in third place). A surprisingly good comparison might be an NBA player averaging 50 points per game for their CAREER.
I'd like to see Rob Lowe do that. Actually, who am I kidding, he's Rob Lowe. He probably could.
Q: I have a theory: for TV shows where nudity is in play, the nudity-independent quality of a particular season is directly proportional to the quality of nudity in that season. The two most obvious examples are Homeland and True Detective — both had amazing first seasons with A+ nudity, and both fell off a cliff in subsequent seasons (in both respects). Thrones, on the other hand, has maintained consistency in both areas over the years. I can’t think of any counter examples, can you?
— Mike G
No, because I get laid.
Q: It is like the girl you had one amazing sexually charged night with, who leaves in the morning and you don’t know her name or contact info. The mailbag returning is like that girl walking back into your life and saying ‘Want to date?’ Yes, yes, yes it is back. My question as a huge Patriots fan and knowing how crazy Bills Mafia is — if the Bills ever won the Super Bowl, wouldn’t that be the most insane SB parade in history? Think about it, they would slam themselves into tables, have dildos everywhere and the town would run out of alcohol and City Hall would be burned down. Glad to have the mailbag back.
— Fuck ESPN, Kendall
Nah, the Bills at least made four straight Super Bowls in the '90s; that right there is a pretty impressive streak. I'm going with the Browns or the Lions. If either of those teams win the Super Bowl, they will make the Bills look like the Patriots crossed with the Yankees and strained through the Celtics. Make it the Browns. The entire city of Cleveland would shut down. Not for a day. Forever. They'd wake up MONTHS from now in Canada or the ruins of Baltimore. Art Modell's decaying corpse impaled on a spike. On that note, I'm out.
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