I am NOT a Schrute!

Weak. If we actually bothered to listen to Colin Cowherd spew off, we would have smeared him yesterday instead of half-assedly going after Billy Donovan and David Beckham. It appears, though, that Page 2 columnist Bill Simmons has taken care of it himself, at least in the nicest way that he possibly could given the Disney/ABC censorship constrictions that go along with his job. Well, that and Cowherd is his co-worker, so it’s not like he can get really personal or anything.

Let us preface this by saying that we like Bill Simmons. Yes, some of his stuff (particularly following the Sawx winning the Series) has been tagged as relatively weak, and yes, he occasionally lapses into using the exact same column over and over again (J-Bug, House, a six pack each–hilarity ensues!)but for the most part SG fires out a shitload of columns that entertain us. And make our post-lunch constitutionals much more entertaining than the copies of Golf Digest that our bosses think comprise quality reading.

Anywho, Cowherd, who kind of hurt his reputation, to really understate it, when he ordered his listeners, a.k.a. “The Herd”, to crash The Big Lead, has become lovingly (prabs) referred to as “Schrutebag”.

Now Cowherd has apparently teed off someone a little bigger in name and a little closer to home when by questioning Simmons’ column last week where he outlined possible trade scenarios for the schizophrenic Kobe Bryant, but kind of–shockingly!–failed to do his full journalistic responsibility by actually attempting to understand his subject matter. Which didn’t make Simmons too happy:

While we’re here, my ESPN colleague Colin Cowherd mocked my seven trade scenarios for Kobe on the radio last week without reading the entire column or even attempting to understand its premise, namely, that the trade options for Kobe were limited because (A) he needed to go to a big market for a team that could contend right away, and (B) nobody pays 100 cents on the dollar for a team looking to unload an unhappy superstar. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Cowherd embarrassed himself by not understanding basic NBA trading principles like “it would be valuable for L.A. to swap Vlad Radmanovic’s contract for Bobby Sura’s expiring contract in a T-Mac/Kobe deal because Sura’s contract expires in 2008, which would buy them some cap space down the road.”

Look, I know the radio business lends itself to hosts lazily skimming other people’s columns and blogs … but seriously, Colin, in the words of Mark Jackson, you’re better than that. Your show’s on for three hours a day and you get four giant commercial breaks per hour. That leaves you plenty of time to research your segments so you don’t come off as misinformed. No offense.

As the kids say, P-wned, Colin. Sure it wasn’t a full on speedbag (again, they’re co-workers) but nice work by Simmons to sound solidly angry yet pleasantly sarcastic, all while pointing out that Schrutebag is kind of an embarrassment.

First of all, let’s not ignore the fact that Simmons, when it comes to the NBA, knows his shit; he’s especially well versed in being able to manipulate potential front office moves and actually having a grip on this “crazy idea” that is the salary cap.

Which brings us to our second point–why is this guy, Cowherd, in charge of a nationally syndicated radio program, when he doesn’t get that the structure of the NBA’s trading rules require reasonably equivalent value in contracts? That seems to us like a pretty important basic premise to grasp if you’re going to get paid wads of cash to mouth off on air.

But maybe that’s the problem with lots of radio shows today (see Imus, Don); in order for hosts to garner attention from audiences and at least create a reaction, there almost always has to be an inherent level of “Oh. No he didn’t” that they create for those listening. Former XM darlings Opie and Anthony along with hosts Ron and Fez have gotten famous (and ultimately suspended for the former) on a certain degree of shock value. Please note that we, for the most part, actually enjoy these groupings of raunchy radio shows.

But their appeal is largely because they are so purposely opinionated and somewhat misinformed in a layperson sense; not to say they don’t know what they’re talking about, but skirting the edge is part of their aesthetic enjoyment. Because they don’t focus on professional athletics or a particular industry, we as an audience don’t expect a specifically trained understanding of that full spectrum.

But for a national radio host who, as Simmons points out, has ample time to prepare before and between segments, to fail to fact check, is pretty irresponsible. Look, we get that the growing culture of the interwebs and the blogosphere make it increasingly difficult for print and media journalists to get scoops and get their quick opinion out on everything, but that doesn’t excuse anyone from doing a job for which they’re getting heavily [over]paid.