t a l l a p e

(Note to non-sports people readers — you should check out the Easterbrook link too! Seriously!)

So, I’ve been reading Bill Simmons for a few years now, and generally like his stuff.

But I’ve decided that as interesting as Simmons may be, Gregg Easterbrook of TMQ is much better.

TMQ (Tuesday Morning Quarterback) is a weekly football column, wrapping up the week’s games. Over the past few years it’s lived at Salon, nfl.com, and now on ESPN’s Page 2.

Easterbrook’s football analysis is good, if a bit offbeat sometimes (for example, he’s convinced that there’s an inverse correlation between football victories and cheerleader clothing).

But the really cool thing is the breadth of his intelligence, and the way that he works it all in. See, Easterbrook isn’t a sportswriter. He’s a fellow at The Brookings Institution, and a contributing editor for The New Republic, The Atlantic, and The Washington Monthly.

Which gives columns like today’s. In which TMQ

• takes the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders to task for putting on track suits during halftime (and gives Harvard’s cheerleaders a hard time for the same thing), thereby guaranteeing victory for their opponents.
• Blames Sports Center for the plethora of awful interceptions in the NFL this year
• Expresses outrage that his dog was given an antibiotic that’s effective against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria
• Goes off on “Julie”, the automated phone attendant on Amtrak’s reservation line
• Expresses amazement at the fact that 96% of the known universe is, well, not known, or at least composed of some matter (or non-matter, or anti-matter, or…) about which we know nothing
• And a whole lot more

Anyway. This post has ended up a lot longer than I really meant for it to be. But I’m digging the column, and I think some of the folks who read this may too…