The mj15 Blog Hall of Famer: YOU!

Naaaah, I'm just kidding! What do you think I am, TIME magazine? No, the actual fifth (and final) member into The mj15 Blog Hall of Fame is...
















Bill Simmons!


You know, for someone who makes a living making podcasts and writing stuff for ESPN.com, I did mention him an awful lot on this blog. In this past year alone I have mentioned him directly and indirectly in at least 12.5% of my posts, which included three straight posts back in August, at least six times in December, twice in which I criticized one of his columns (01/28 and 02/01), a few in which I quoted him or praised him for what he wrote and at least one mention every month this blog has existed with the exception of June 2010. On my very first official blog post, I named him my first Person of the Week for him being a major part in deciding where a high school senior should go to college (the high schooler took Dartmouth over Princeton on account of the fact that Simmons never liked any Princeton grad). Back in November,this altercation he wrote on one of his NFL picks columns involving a Seattle cop influenced me to give the cop a Person of the Week of his own. Then, on my last End of the Year columns back in late December-early January, I named him along with 31 others as my 2009 People of the Year. I also picked him as my vote for sports writer of the decade, if you'd believe it! Along with select few that includes Jon Stewart, Tiger Woods and quite a few NFL teams and players, no one was more mentioned or more written about on this blog that the man nicknamed as The Sports Guy.


There are other reasons. Back in October, he released his second book titled "The Book of Basketball" which was bought by millions (including myself in December) and became a New York Times #1 bestseller. In less than a year and a half, his Twitter account has received over 1,200,000 followers and counting. The documentary series in which he was the executive producer of, "30 for 30" premiered this fall and has been fantastic thus far, a must watch for anyone that loves sports documentaries or just good TV in general (my favorite so far has been a tie between "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson," and "June 17, 1994," though "The U" was pretty great, too). Meanwhile, the Sports guy columns that made him popular and started the Bill Simmons brand going is all but declining in popularity, averaging over 1.4 million page views a months as of November of '09. Meanwhile his podcast, the BS Report, is the most popular podcast on ESPN and one of the most popular on the Internet, averaging 2,000,000 downloads a month. Plus, there's a sure shot that he will become a very rich man once he signs a new contract with ESPN or with any other Internet site once his current contract expires at the end of this year.


So even though there were certain moments where I expressed my hatred of him, thought that some of his columns were bad and even went as far as calling him a douche, Simmons still deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for his influence on me and of his successes (and failures) of 2009 and the first half of 2010. NO ONE DENIES THIS!
Sincerely,
Your pal: mj15








If you have any opinions on today's post, or if you want to suggest anything to mj15 for his next blog entry (tips, perhaps?), e-mail him at: mj1599@aol.com. Your e-mails are greatly appreciated.