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Until genius struck. Via seeing Elizabeth Berkley (Jessie Spano on Saved by the Bell) interviewed on Chelsea Lately. Part of the interview focused on the fictional Jesse's addiction to energy pills. (You know: I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so ... scared.")
About halfway through this interview it occurred to me that all of life's answers could be found in Saved by the Bell. Aside from heading straight to Amazon to buy every season on DVD in an effort to find out how to live my life now that I'm a father, I also had a vague recollection that Bayside triumphed over Valley in a quiz bowl episode.
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| If Zack had only known about Jesse's dancing skills he would have told Kelly to just take Slater. (Getty Images) |
So I decided what better way to challenge this stereotype once and for all than with a quiz bowl for charity? Five bloggers that have agreed to participate will take on a team of five of the most talented, educated and intelligent mainstream sportswriters that are willing to compete against them. Hopefully the roster will feature at least a few of the recent blogger insulters (Bob Costas, Buzz Bissinger, Rick Reilly, Michael Wilbon) you name the mainstream media members who are willing and there's a blogging team ready to play them for charity.
And, as a bonus, we'll let the captain of the mainstream media team select a charity they would like to raise money for. So, for example, if he's willing to participate, we would be happy to send all the proceeds to fund more of Reilly's mosquito nets in Africa. In fact it would be ideal if Reilly, given his frequent and vituperative criticism of sports bloggers and his new boffo column deal, was willing to put together his own team. Even if Reilly's not a member of the mainstream media we'll be willing to let him join.
Pick a deserving charity, we'll raise money via donations to the blog sites through a link to the charity that will be plastered all over the web, and via whatever other means make sense to raise the most money. While Reilly's blogging criticism has been inane and dumb, his charity is completely and utterly worthy. There are thousands of others.
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| Of all the bad things people have called Costas, nobody ever called him tall. (Getty Images) |
The date, time and location for the quiz bowl are flexible so as to best fit the schedules of the participants and the needs of the charity. (We've heard from quite a few people offering to write quiz bowl questions for the contest and are confident we can adequately handle that preparation. Although, and I stress this, there will be no viewing of the questions by anyone other than the question-preparers.) There's only one rule: No sports questions. Zero. This is a test of intelligence and most of sports have absolutely nothing at all to do with intelligence.
The five members of the blogging team are identified below in their own words. All are intelligent and well-educated writers who provide compelling and unique voices. The sites they write for run the gamut from profane satire to studied analysis of sports. Sometimes overlapping, like life itself, from the shallow to the sincere in the same sentence. What they share in common is that I selfishly enjoy reading all five, they focus on different aspects of the sports landscape than traditional media and they are all confident they will destroy the mainstream media team. Without further ado, meet the blogging team:
Drew Magary of Kissing Suzy Kolber: "I'm 31 years old. I started blogging because it afforded me a chance to swear without consequence. My turn-ons include women in business suits and women who are attracted to me. My turn-offs include Mike Lupica and anyone who likes Mike Lupica. I'm a graduate of Colby College class of '98. Prior to that I attended Phillips Exeter Academy For Privileged White Youth '94."
Drew's first book, much to Buzz Bissinger's shock and displeasure after his ripping of Magary's online writing, will be released by some no-named publisher called Little, Brown in October 2008.
Dan Shanoff of danshanoff.com: "Dan Shanoff is arguably the most academically over-credentialed voice in sports media today, with a journalism degree from Northwestern and an MBA from Harvard Business School (Best. $100,000. Ever.), both of which sound very good on a Quiz Bowl résumé but neither of which are particularly necessary to write the shallowest (and dailiest!) national sports column in the country for the past six years. Quiz Bowl expertise: Anything but sports, obviously."
Matt Ufford of With Leather: "I'm 29 and a graduate of Northwestern. I grew up an Air Force brat and joined the Marines out of college. I led a tank platoon during the invasion of Iraq, finished my contract, and moved to New York with the nebulous plan of "being a writer." And that's how I started blogging: I couldn't get any freelance work, but I needed an outlet to write. So I helped start Kissing Suzy Kolber in June 2006, then I became one of the original writers at FanHouse in August of that year (they still provide me a forum to show that I can write without swearing), and then I got backing for With Leather, which went live that October. It was a busy couple of months, and it's been busy ever since.
Brian Cook of mgoblog: "I grew up in Colorado and Michigan, got a bachelors and masters in computer engineering from Michigan, and worked as an engineer for about three years after college. While at Michigan some friends and I started an Onion ripoff that I edited for four years.
"MGoBlog started in late 2005, just before the Michigan-Texas Rose Bowl and about eight months into my second engineering job. No one really knows why they do anything, but I think three things motivated me to start it up:
"1) I didn't have an outlet via which to express my special snowflake-ness after I graduated college,
"2) I was constantly dissatisfied with the shallowness of mainstream sports coverage, and
"3) Whenever the conversation turned to Michigan sports I would talk for 15 minutes or until one of my friends punched me.
"Starting a blog seemed like the only way to go. About a year and a half later, the company I was working for noticed I was spending most of my time blogging and figured they shouldn't pay me to do that. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Spencer Hall of Every Day Should be Saturday: "Spencer Hall is 31 years old. He writes and occasionally edits the website Every Day Should be Saturday.com (founded in 2005), and also contributes to the Sporting News. He has a bachelor's in English from the University of Florida and holds a Masters in International Affairs from Georgia Tech."
Spencer also took the opportunity to begin the trash talk: "My team could vanquish the allied armies of the continent at the Battle of Leipzig. We are individually as mighty as Beowulf, as eloquent as Demosthenes, and as handsome as the bearded courtiers of ancient Babylon. But because we are bloggers, we can't read and don't know what any of that means. So, revised: we'll kick your ass sideways."
Further details on the quiz bowl will be forthcoming, but until then, let the summer commence, with a blogging shot across the bow. The denizens of their parents' basement (and some of the most prestigious schools in America) are awaiting mainstream media challengers. Like the finest lazy gym teachers in America, let's set the proverbial ball on the court and get rolling.