E-pundit and male-human-who-is-a-fan-of-sports Bill Simmons has cashed in nicely on being among the first to Web 2.0-ize sports journalism (a topic addressed here). He’s also likely the most knowledgeable person under 50 on professional basketball, so I found myself revisiting a much-discussed column of his in trying to process the unlikely run of success my hometown Milwaukee Bucks have had in the NBA playoffs.  Essentially, Simmons proffers the sports equivalent of “Better to have loved and lost…” as a way to hierarchize whose fans have suffered more than others.  Fans of the New York Knicks, for example, are more “tortured” than, say, those of the Pittburgh Pirates not only because the former has gone longer without a title (1973 for the Knicks; 1979 for the Pirates), but also because the Knicks have since played in more “gut-wrenching” games and suffered through the historically ruinous tenure of general manager Isaiah Thomas.  All the Pirates have done recently is set the North American record for futility last fall when they completed their 17th consecutive losing season.

Now, Simmons is a bar-room philosophizer and an unabashed homer.  His version of Theory is mostly fun and innocuous as a conversation-starter (except when, um, it isn’t), but something about his terms of debate seem sympomatic to me of how mainstream sports media institutions cover various teams, markets, and their fans.  That is, the teams/fans we define as most “tortured” or “suffering” are almost always the ones that have first been deemed worthy of our attention.  Part of this definition, obviously, is based on history.  The Chicago Cubs became the nation’s “Loveable Losers” in large part because they haven’t won the World Series in over 100 years.  The other part of the definition, though, is based on narrative.  Teams with a long history of losing have ready-made stories for sound-bite-sized consumption; others have charismatic superstars or cancer survivors or some other compelling triumph over adversity^TM.  But what about the teams that have neither history nor story; the ones that simply loiter in the lower half of the standings year-in and year-out; the ones so unremarkable that they don’t even have a bandwagon?  And what happens when these teams do, every once in a while, become relevant?

This brings me to the Milwaukee Bucks and their unexpected playoff success against the far superior Atlanta Hawks.  Both teams share similar histories of middling success, but the Hawks play a camera-friendly brand of basketball that’s led to their home court being nicknamed the “highlight factory.”  Talking points and b-roll for games telecast from Atlanta were a no-brainer, but what of their star-less, style-less opponents?  Some tidbits about the telecasts from Milwaukee:

• When coming back from commercial during game 4, ESPN showed stock footage of the Capitol building and State St. in Madison, WI.
• Responding to an Atlanta player’s complaint that “there ain’t nothing to do in Milwaukee,” color commentator Jon Barry half-jokingly sang the praises of the city’s beer and bratwursts.
• Marvelling at the unusual sight of capacity crowds in Milwaukee’s Bradley Center, players, coaches, and broadcasters alike asserted that the Bucks were “doing this for the city,” the ultimate trope for narrativizing sporting “success” in a small market.

Regarding the last bullet point, don’t mistake this for a big-market vs. small-market beef (the Los Angeles Clippers are just as pitiful and ignored by sports media as the Pittsburgh Pirates).  I just want to know more about the isolated incidents of irrelevance like the ones I experienced this past week, ones that are inexorably swallowed up by coverage of the Yankees’ victory parade or LeBron’s free-agency or Tim Tebow, lemme tellya, this kid, he has HEART, but he has no chance in THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE ^{TM, must never be said as acronym and must always be shouted}.  I want to know more about the teams that perennially make first-round playoff exits, or ones that had no business being there in the first place.  I want to know more about expansion franchises and league contractions and the flotsam and jetsam of teams that relocate.  I want to know about season-ticket holders for the WNBA and the MLS.  I want to know how a Toronto Raptors fan feels about Vince Carter, how a Seattle SuperSonics fan feels about Kevin Durant, or how a Florida Marlins fan feels about Scott Stapp.

Mostly, I want fans who claim to suffer so much more than those not fortunate enough to follow a tortured team to recognize the difference between being “tortured” and being irrelevant.  If you’re really not sure which you’d rather be, try meeting a 17-year-old Pirates fan.

The Sports Guy, also known as Bill Simmons, got his start in journalism online, reporting on his beloved Boston teams from the perspective of an unabashed fan at Digital City Boston before coming into his own on ESPN.com’s ‘Page 2’ and ‘The B.S. Report’ podcast.  While he’s written two books, his primary mode of engagement is throughly rooted in new media: he blogs, chats, podcasts, and tweets religiously.

He’s a sportswriter, but unlike, the melodramatic musings of, say, Rick Reilly, Simmons is actually a pop intellectual masquerading as a sports writer.  He simply views the enormous sphere of American popular culture through the lens of sports and its attendant structures, emotions, reception, gossip, and metaphors.  Sometimes this unification is manifested overtly; at others, he eschews explicit sports talk altogether, opting instead to spend an entire poll, column, or podcast detailing the Blackberry for cheaters (trademark: ‘The Infidel’), the merits of Friday Night Lights, or the best ‘first boobs’ film moments.

To facilitate the process, Simmons has amassed a vast network of regular pop culture guests, including Chuck Klosterman, Jon Hamm, Adam Carolla, TV critic Alan Sepinwall, and SNL’s Seth Meyers; he also calls on longtime friends and colleagues (Jack-O; ESPN producer and ‘reality TV czar’ Dave Jacoby) to discuss specific shows, sports rivalries, and scandals.

But why does Simmons matter — and is his style really anything new?  Crucially, he rose to fame by writing in a blog-style before blogs even existed, gaining a tremendous (albeit niche) readership, then parlaying that popularity into a national readership.  He’s basically the journalistic version of the YouTube musician.  He cares little for long-form investigative journalism or even interviews with the players.  He’s a fan, and wants to stay that way — thereby increasing reader identification and loyalty exponentially.

And don’t forget the fact that he’s a.) funny and b.) totally a Beta-dude.  In other words, he’s a guy’s guy, but by no means an Alpha jock; his very existence validates your cerebral, thoroughly armchair-based sports obsession.  For while his beloved Red Sox are historically a working man’s team, Simmons and his fan base represent the new brand of white collar, fantasy-league-centric sports fan — the only fans still wealthy enough to buy seats outside of the nosebleeds.  These fans — male or female — can engage in the sort of pop culture puzzles and analogies favored by Simmons, writing into his Mailbag and participating in chat sessions, because they work at sort of desk jobs that create space, both intellectually and technologically, to do so.

Finally, Simmons is theoretically a conglomerate’s dream — albeit an imperfect, glitchy one.  He increases the loyalty of pre-exisiting ESPN while pulling in those, such as myself, outside its expected reach, simultaneously consolidating and expanding the ESPN brand.  And while he’s quick to chide the ESPN powers-that-be, he also deftly promotes ESPN products, including the recent 30 for 30 series for which he served as an executive producer.

But Simmons’ intrinsic conglomerate value lies most explicitly in his potential to create non-traditional lines of synergy, promoting media products within his home conglomerate’s galaxy.  ESPN is owned by Disney, creating any number of possible connections.  But for now, at least, Simmons has succeeded in resisting whatever pressure Disney may or may not have leveled.  He appears to interview people and talk about shows that he likes, including those, such as The Wire, that are about as far from a Disney product as possible, regardless of network or studio.  Nevertheless, Simmons’ style of commentary — niche but broad in both audience and in topic, complimented by a diversified means of distribution — seems to be a potential model of journalism, sports or otherwise, for the future.

1. The US Justice Department okayed the merger between Live Nation (the world’s largest ticket promoter) and Ticketmaster (the world’s largest ticket sales company). Will this benefit the concertgoer? The DOJ and No Doubt think so; the Wall Street Journal is skeptical.

2. AMC ordered the pilot for Walking Dead, which Frank Darabont will produce, write, and direct. Adapting the zombie apocalypse comic of the same name, the channel, it seems, hopes to combine two of its most popular draws: horror and prestige drama.

3. After only 37 days in theatres, Cameron’s love-it-or-hate-it Avatar surpassed Cameron’s love-it-or-hate-it Titanic as the highest grossing film of all time. It’s catching up to Titanic quickly in terms of domestic sales as well, but things look very different when adjusted for admissions instead of dollars—currently, it’s #25 in the US.

4. As you get ready for Lost, a series of great links to amusing preparatory material can be found at Ramblings of a TV Whore.

5. In “Getting Past Viral,” Ivan Askwith offers a provocative call to disarm, and to move beyond sloppy notions of “viral marketing,” in a post at Big Spaceship’s site

6. In case you didn’t know already, a committee of non-humanist boneheads at University of Iowa are planning to kill the Film Studies and Comp Lit PhDs (well, the program, not the individuals … though maybe that’s next). Read more, and a nice testimonial to the program via Henry Jenkins’s blog.

7. If you have a problem, and no one else can help you …. The A-Team trailer is out, for all those 80s renegades and would-be 80s renegades. But we’re forced to ask, is there a statute of limitations on iconic father figures played that Liam Neeson is rapidly approaching (Obi-Wan’s master, Aslan, Ducard (a.k.a. the dude who trained Batman), now Hannibal, and soon to be Zeus in Clash of the Titans)?

8.  Oft-injured Portland Trail Blazers center and generally large human being Greg Oden became the latest professional athlete to have his NSFW cellphone pics circulated on the innernette (Google at your own risk).  The real story here is the wave of bizarre commentary from the sports writing community provoked by the pics.

9. Critically acclaimed 2009 horror film The House of the Devil receives a VHS release this week. (Granted, the VHS comes bundled with a DVD, somewhat like the trend of vinyl LPs coming with free digital downloads.) Is the videotape about to experience a revival? Or is this just nostalgia? Or merely a marketing gimmick?

10. Are digital music downloads too expensive? The music industry had a record-breaking year for digital music sales in 2009, suggesting that consumers are more than willing to fork over cash for “legal” downloads. However, a recent study from UPenn’s Wharton School suggests that the iTunes 99-cents per song model is overpriced and the industry would actually profit more from charging less. The industry, though, doesn’t seem convinced; Billboard has been quick to try and marginalize the research as, among other things, “strictly an academic exercise.”