John Clay’s Sidelines

Being too cheap to consistently shell out the big dough for HBO, I missed the heat-seeking missile Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Buzz Bissinger fired at Deadspin and blogs in general a couple of weeks ago during a forum discussion with Bob Costas.

The profanity-laced tirade, in which Bissinger dismissed blogs as the lowest form of sophomoric tripe, has been all the talk of the internet the past couple of weeks.

You can hear an excerpt from the show here, but be warned it includes objectional language. (It is HBO, after all.)

If you don’t recognize the name, Bissinger wrote the classic "Friday Night Lights" book about high school football in Texas. It may be the best book on high school sports ever written.

Here’s a Q & A at The Big Lead with Bissinger in which he apologizes (sort of) for his behavior on the HBO show, without exactly repudiating his words.

As another aside, here’s Bissinger on the Eight Belles tragedy.

More links:

• Another Bissinger interview. [Sporting News]
• Comment allez-vous Buzz Bissinger? [Aaron Barnhart]
• Bissinger’s blog bashing: Over the top, but on target. [Leonard Shapiro]

With the Daytona 500 coming up Sunday, we have but one thing to say:

[busted tees]

Hey, hunting is a sport, right? From last night’s Letterman:

Top Ten Dick Cheney Excuses:

• 10. "Heart palpitation caused trigger finger to spasm."
• 9. "Wanted to get the Iraq mess off the front page."
• 8. "Not enough Jim Beam."
• 7. "Trying to stop the spread of bird flu."
• 6. "I love to shoot people."
• 5. "Guy was making cracks about my lesbian daughter."
• 4. "I thought the guy was trying to go ‘gay cowboy’ on me."
• 3. "Excuse? I hit him, didn’t I?"
• 2. "Until Democrats approve medicare reform, we have to make some tough choices on the elderly."
• 1. "Made a bet with Gretzky’s wife."

Can you guess this person’s identity?