Bill Simmons is a dumbass

I know, everyone understands that Bill Simmons is a "homer" and a fool. And I even agree with Deadspin's Leitch that sports reporters don't simply become impartial as soon as they take a job. But Bill Simmons is employed by the dominate national sports broadcaster to just spew homer-istic nonsense on a website and then call it "content."

From his newest bullshit:

Only cities with locals who can play hockey outside in the winter can have an NHL team. Look, I want to like the NHL again. It looks magnificent in HD, and really, that's all that matters in life. For the umpteenth straight year, I'm going to advocate a 22-team league: two 11-team conferences, one in Canada, one in America, only in cold-weather cities (no ifs, ands or buts). That will give us more rivalries, deeper teams and a higher quality of play.

See, the problem is that we all know that Simmons didn't start "liking" the NHL until last year, when the Bruins made the playoffs for the first time in whenever. Hell, he admitted to it back then. So why does it matter if Boston is in a cold-weather area? It apparently didn't matter to him before six months ago. It's not as if, three years ago, Simmons woke up one morning and thought, "Gee, I should go see a Bruins-Kings game. I know that my hometown team is probably going to lose, but I sure do fondly remember playing hockey as a child. Seeing my beloved Bruins will bring back those memories. Ahh, to youth..."

Frankly, I don't really give a shit about (aboot?) hockey. I've been to games, and they're fun and all, but I just don't care. Yeah, that's probably because I never played it as a kid (and I couldn't really skate with wheels, either), but I really never played baseball much (just the wiffle and soft varieties, really), and I still care about that. I probably wouldn't care about it if I hadn't grown up seeing the Astros, but there you have it. People care about what they've been exposed to. I'm sure there are plenty of people in Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, and Phoenix who really do care about hockey. They either lived somewhere where they played it as children or have seen it enough to give a shit.

In fact, I'm pretty sure plenty of people care about hockey in those cities. Why? Because I can look at the attendance figures to see what the fuck is going on. What do we see with those figures?

Well, the bottom five teams in home attendance are Florida (hot), New Jersey (cold), Chicago (cold), Washington (cold), and Columbus (cold). From what I understand of it, Chicago is also one of the oldest clubs in the NHL. But they're still only selling 82% of their seats.

Now, I'll admit that the devotion of fans in Carolina is likely much less than that of Toronto. And that's to be expected - Americans just aren't into hockey as much as Canadians. But would Simmons say that New England cares about the Bruins as much as they care about the Red Sox? Fuck no.

I've seen similar arguments with other sports. The most brazen (I think) was one on Fark arguing for the contraction of the MLB to only the original franchises. What? Why would anyone want this? Baseball is undergoing a renaissance - stadiums are filled with fans and TV deals are more lucrative than ever before. And it's at least partly the work of the expansion.

More to the point, why do some cities deserve MLB (or NHL, NFL, NBA) teams, while others do not? Why would Minneapolis keep the Twins, while Houston would lose the Stros? Granted, it's tough to come up with cities whose "main" team is their expansion baseball team, but it's possible to find. Houston is probably the best example, though that is largely the product of the Oilers leaving town, the Astros going through roughly a decade of playoff baseball, and the Texans' continued suckage. The Oilers undoubtedly dominated Houston prior to about 1995, but, hey, shit changes.

The point is this: I get tired of this bullshit from a bunch of Yankees. I think it's our fault, too. If the expansion-era teams (whether in the NHL or MLB) didn't do so well, recently, then the older franchises' fans wouldn't get so pissed off. They long for the "Golden Age" when only teams from the East Cost dominated, and everyone from middle America could go fuck themselves. That's the truth of it - a sad nostalgia for a time these assholes never lived through.

And that's why Simmons didn't give a shit about the Bruins a year ago - they weren't winning and the weren't the Sox, so why should he care about them? Same with the Celtics. Same with the Patriots a decade ago. That's the fucking truth.