Why don’t I care for Simmons? Content and approach.
Pop culture references in sports writing, movies, music…etc always bother me because they limit the lasting power of the piece. Nobody on earth will get the references in The 40 Year-Old Virgin – an otherwise funny movie – twenty years from now. (They actually make jokes in that film about Maid in Manhattan, a movie people had forgotten before it was released.) Simmons not only utilizes pop-culture references but often uses reality TV and his favorite movies as the complete framework for his columns.
Simmons likes a lot of stuff I don’t care for.