The worst major-market sports media city in the country

Chicago, of course.

I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.

We live in a town where one of our national football writers not only thinks that Tim Tebow is a first round draft pick at quarterback, he also thinks that Sam Bradford is not only the number one overall pick, he's "a slam-dunk."

We have a local football writer campaigning for Julius Peppers to become a Chicago Bear without ever mentioning Peppers' widely reported desire to play in a 3-4 defense.

We have a national baseball reporter who came up with this.

And lest you think I'm just picking on one paper, our other daily features a quixotic, verbose naval gazer who feels like he's consistently trying and failing to emulate a certain equally insipid national columnist.

That same paper gives us arguably the most shrill, overwrought, indefensible and yet occasionally still fence sitting harpy ever foisted on an unsuspecting populous.

And Jay Mariotti is gone. Say what you will about Jay (Often times wrong, abrasive, an absolute horror to work with) in a town filled with despratly milquetoast, unquestionably daft, and harmless but no less annoying sycophants at least he was relevant.

And yet, in the joke, the farce that is this town's sports media, I've yet to deliver the punch line:

Comcast Sports Net.

Stuck in bed with the stomach flu and up at odd hours I happened upon CSN's "Monsters in the Morning," the reunion of WSCR's former midday duo, Dan Jiggetts and Mike North. I have to admit I enjoyed the Monsters back in the mid-90s, although not yet having reached an age of any real reason may have been a big part of it.

Comcast has managed to bolt some new media onto the show. Text polls, email, etc, but for the most part, North and Jiggetts are doing the exact same show they were doing in 1999. In fact, there's really nothing about this show that couldn't be done on the radio. Maybe somewhere the grand plan is to syndicate this show on the radio somewhere, but I simply cannot give any operation still employing Jen Patterson the credit of explaining away laziness as foresight.

Although Jiggetts and North provided exactly zero compelling thoughts in my hour of sampling, they still manged to be the best show I've ever seen on CSN, and the truth is, I went into the show hoping to like it. I wanted to see something with some potential. Despite my strong dislike towards North and my feelings of utter indifference toward Jiggetts, this city needs more relevant voices. As it stands, the show feels like a complete anachronism.

As the recently fired Dan McNeil noted a few weeks ago in his Sun-Times column, Chicago needs North and Jiggetts to be good. Hell, right now, Chicago could really use Dan McNeil, who will be off the air because of a non-compete until early summer. I didn't really care for his show on WMVP (I greatly prefer the direct competition, WSCR's Boers and Bernstein) but I know many did, and not having McNeil on the air hurts this city.

Chicago's not the only city to suffer this fate. In fact, I'm sure most cities have begun to reach a critical mass of stupid.

It's my belief that bad sports writing/journalism/commentary is primarily the result of laziness, but if the bipeds of the forest are willing to consume bucketfuls of this tripe, then who is really at fault? Although my stridently anti-populist side would like nothing more than to point the finger straight back at the consumer, I know they didn't set the paradigm. Rather, the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of the parasitic, soul sucking, sports marketing firm that still tries to pass itself off as a news outlet and it's benign, wholly ignorant, oppressively bloviating, and downright abhorrent cast of characters

I'd like to think that sports blogs offer some amount of solace. The most compelling sports opinion I've read in the last 5 years have come from amateurs or former amateurs, but as we know, there's still plenty of miserable cretins willing to write, consume and thus propagate uninformed sports opinion on the internet. It's high time sports fans began demanding a better product.

Outdoor Hockey...

Is pretty damn awesome

The Winter Classic is now a mainstay when it comes to New Year's Day sporting events. Move over Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl, you've got some company because the Winter Classic isn't going anywhere. This is exactly what the NHL needed to do to help rejuvenate this sport: create an event that people beyond your normal hockey fans will remember and want to attend and/or watch. People love outdoor hockey (see The Cold War) So let's keep this tradition of the Winter Classic going -- Next year have it in Fenway Park between the Bruins and the Leafs, or even at the new Yankee Stadium between the Rangers and Devils. Pond hockey is here to stay and I like it.