Bob Ryan

Isn't he supposed to be the sensible, rational one over at the Globe? In any case, he claims he doesn't get how people can be so fixated on football today. Huh?

... I'm not ridiculing or downplaying the Patriots, but let's not lose sight of the fact that it's still early September and the leaves haven't even thought of changing yet. Football is the intruder here. It is still very much baseball season, and the Red Sox have their biggest series of the season taking place right now. We don't need football 24/7 to keep us occupied. ...

Would the phrase I'm thinking of be "straw man"?

I know, I know, that's territory best left for the CHB, but Pax Arcana gets annoyed at the way Ryan keeps ripping into Bill Simmons on his blog without actually mentioning his name, let alone linking to whatever it is Simmons wrote online that got Ryan all riled up.

... It seems that Ryan is falling into the trap of playing by print rules on Web turf. I don't advocate using the Web as a platform for slander or ad hominem attacks on other writers - I'm arguing that where print venues once conferred upon columnists the ability to call down the thunder from on high with thinly veiled insults, the Internet requires greater frankness. If you hadn't read Simmons' column already, you may have no idea who Ryan is talking about. Even if you could guess who he was referencing, you'd still have to click multiple times to find it - only to be disappointed that you waded all the way over there for what amounts to a minor schoolyard dust-up. ...

Here is what got Ryan's knickers in a bunch.

Bob Ryan got librarians all riled up by writing that Tom Brady would never date "a homely librarian." Ryan responds to all the librarians who wrote him to complain by saying he has no doubt there are library babes but that the key was "homely," not "librarian:"

... I insist that instead of getting all huffy about a very apt reference, all these "offended" librarians should have had a laugh. I cannot believe the lengths some of them went to defend the profession. They apparently think that we think they're all geeks. I don't. No one is more committed to the concept of the printed word than I. ...

David Scott has the deets on the sportsy cat fight, which so far actually seems limited to Ryan howling about Bill Simmons and Simmons just sitting there, not saying a thing (Media Farm wonders if it's all just a ploy by Ryan to make himself relevant again - hmm, isn't that Shaughnessy's thing, you know, pick a fight for no particular reason?). The alleged central issue: Whether the Celtics should fire Doc Rivers as coach.