The Sports Guy's Voice

Bill Simmons is a writer known as the “Sports Guy.” His blogs are always interesting and his writing style is very engaging. His blogs possess conversational characteristics, which is beneficial for the reader. The reader gets a good sense of his persona through his writing. He is comical but not just for the sake of trying to be funny. He inserts little jabs at athletes but the reader appreciates when he does and is just waiting for more. He’s sarcastic at times. He’s also negative at times, but only to make the reader laugh, either through indifference or by empathizing with what he is saying. His analogies and metaphors link to pop culture and common ideas that most people can relate to. 

The easy way of describing his voice is to say that he is real. I say “easy” because, well, “real” isn’t exactly saying much. What I mean is that he’s honest. He admits when he’s wrong and admits when he has to change. He also admits to participating in the ridiculous idea of “sports-hate”, in simple terms, where a fan hates a team or athlete but doesn’t necessarily want anything bad to happen to them (doesn’t necessarily? whatever dude).

His post “Running on sports-hate empty” is a good display of his persona.  He talks about the athletes he used to sports-hate but can no longer sports-hate them. Still questioning this new appreciation for certain athletes, he asks the reader to read the previous paragraphs because his flesh his on fire and he can no longer see the screen from all the smoke. Later in the article, he becomes even more frustrated to the point where he writes: 

Forget about lighting myself on fire. Too easy. I'm leaning toward giving myself a colonic with a leaf blower. 

This is an exhibition of the dry rumor that he sometimes employs. The imagery is quite amusing but the reader is able to understand what he is saying by the exaggeration of his descriptions. A colonic with a leaf blower seems painful and wrong. Wrong, mainly because I believe that's the opposite way things are supposed to be flowing in that procedure.

He uses a lot of pop culture references which add to the further characterization of his voice An example of the pop culture referencing is in the following quote: 

I was watching "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" at something like 4:30 in the morning recently because my body clock is screwed up and I keep waking up at weird hours like the girl in "Paranormal Activity."

This is just another example of his distinct style of humor. He makes theses pop culture analogies that seem pretty random at first but are actually quite appropriate. The humor comes from the fact that he and the girl both wake up at odd hours, but he is not possessed by a demon like she is. It is funny that he purposely chooses to disclose that fact.  

There is another article,”We are all witnesses”, that displays his voice well. In it, he discusses Lebron James and all of his awesomeness. He writes:

You never forget he's on the court. Not for a second. Even his teammates are enamored with him; they jockey for his attention like Octomom's kids.

The reader could understand what he’s trying to convey before the Octomom reference, but he goes that extra step. That extra step is taken for two reasons: to give an example, because people love examples, and to make the reader laugh. He can attempt to be funny without jeopardizing his arguments on the topic; he finds the right balance.