By David Gibb and Nick Bond
Nick Bond: Hello, David.
David Gibb: What up, Nick?
Nick Bond: Nothing, just happy to be back on campus, happy to be in the chronicle office, and most importantly, glad that my fantasy football season has been vaporized by a questionable hit on the league’s reigning MVP.
David Gibb: Well, I think the New York Giants proved last year that the way to attack Tom Terrific is with questionable hits.
David Gibb: So it’s hard to blame a guy.
Nick Bond: Yeah, I mean, at least Tom Brady’s mom hasn’t called ESPN to say that the fans hurt his feelings by booing him.
David Gibb: Yeah, I don’t know how to feel about that. This isn’t little league, but I’m sure Vince Young’s mother had her heart in the right place.
David Gibb: But that’s just the latest in a series of wild stories like that this summer, though.
David Gibb: Any favorites?
Nick Bond: Well, since we are talking about quarterbacks, how about the wall-to-wall Brett Favre un-retirement coverage?
David Gibb: Well, the coverage was more the story than the story itself in that case.
David Gibb: I won’t lie, there was about a 10-day period when I couldn’t stomach watching EFPN (The Eastern Favre Programming Network).
Nick Bond: The only good thing about that entire story was that Estabrook Hall made it on to ESPN at least twice.
David Gibb: I’ll tell you what else I was glad to see on ESPN.
David Gibb: The Trop, son.
David Gibb: Home of the feel-good team of the decade, the Tampa Bay Rays.
David Gibb: Forget the US Basketball team, they were supposed to win. It’s all about the Rays finally having not only a winning season, but a probably playoff berth to go along with it.
Nick Bond: It must be real hard to be that good when you’ve been picking first the past ten years.
David Gibb: Well, there were a lot of free agent signings (Carlos Pena and Troy Percival come to mind) that led to their success.
David Gibb: Plus it seems that the team finally found a manager in Joe Maddon who speaks the players’ language as well as the organization’s.
Nick Bond: But is the success of the Rays really a bigger story than the failure of the Yankees?
David Gibb: Definitely. The Yankees should have failed. If they thought that Hughes and Kennedy were going to take them to the postseason, they clearly took one too many sips of their own Kool Aid.
David Gibb: Hats off to guys like Joe Girardi, Mike Mussina, and Jason Giambi for leading them to as many wins as they have.
David Gibb: They were only a story this year because they played in New York.
Nick Bond: Are you trying to imply there is some sort of New York bias on ESPN?
David Gibb: Wouldn’t dream of it. Can’t wait for the Knicks coverage, though.
David Gibb: Speaking of coverage, it would be unjust to discuss the summer without mentioning the Olympics, though.
David Gibb: Thoughts?
Nick Bond: Big fan.
Nick Bond: …
Nick Bond: I should probably elaborate on that.
Nick Bond: I enjoyed the entire Michael Phelps experience. It is one of the few events in my life to actually live up to the hype.
Nick Bond: I also enjoyed Usain Bolt dominating my favorite non-ball related sport.
David Gibb: I think the magical thing about Phelps isn’t his dominance, but his aura. He is infinitely likable in a way that not many athletes who participate in (mostly) individual sports usually aren’t.
David Gibb: It’s basically him and Tiger in that respect, now that Federer has fallen out of vogue after Wimbledon.
Nick Bond: Now that’s a summer story!
David Gibb: It’s one of the biggest stories of the last ten years… Unfortunately it’s tennis and this is the United States.
Nick Bond: Which is a shame, because that was probably the best single sports event of the last decade, and Nick Bond: And for me it ended one of the more perfect streaks ever, Federer’s 65-match unbeaten streak on grass.
David Gibb: It’s been a bad year for perfection… The Patriots lose (and then later lose Brady), Tiger wins on one leg and then disappears from the public eye, and Federer’s reign at number one ends.
David Gibb: This is the year of the loser.
David Gibb: I blame the essential boringness of perfection.
Nick Bond: I blame the essential boringness of repetitiveness.
Nick Bond: Though, I feel that this summer has started to move us into a new generation of athletes.
David Gibb: Oh, definitely.
Nick Bond: From Tim Lincecum lighting up the National League to Jay Cutler lighting up the Oakland Raiders
David Gibb: Well, to be fair, if you can’t light up the Oakland Raiders, you may be a caveman, because you obviously haven’t discovered fire yet.
Nick Bond: I feel this summer was auspicious of a fundamental change in the sporting landscape.
David Gibb: Definitely. It’s exciting. A major changing of the guard is taking place in both baseball and football.
David Gibb: And the Olympics served to showcase the wealth of young athletic talent worldwide.
David Gibb: Now if only we could get some of those older names out of there… No matter how great (or terrible) his numbers are this season, it’s going to be hard to write a Brett Favre story that doesn’t sound tired.
David Gibb: The future of American sport excites me, though.
Nick Bond: Anything from the summer particularly worry you?
David Gibb: I sort of alluded to it earlier while discussing Favre, but the way the media has been covering stories lately has bothered me way more than most of the stories themselves.
David Gibb: There’s this tabloid sense of sensationalism to every story now.
David Gibb: And, on a personal level, I’d like to say that the Jay Mariotti story out of Chicago is one of the most disgusting things I have witnessed in either sports or journalism.
David Gibb: It just goes to show that Ozzie Guillen is smarter than people give him credit for.
Nick Bond: And that Jay Mariotti is the worst person that has ever lived. Ever.