I stopped reading Gregg Easterbrook quite awhile ago- I don't have time to read a lot of 15,000-word weekly football columns anymore- but Isaac of ALOTT5MA gets to what always bugged me about him:
It tickles me a little that people are now saying that Easterbrook is batshit-insane because, like many of us, he says that the Patriots are evil, but unlike almost all of us, he actually means it literally. Yes, that position is batshit-insane, but folks, where have you been all these years? To wit: (1) he is a political scientist who thinks he is a football genius, based on his interesting theories that one should always run in short-yardage situations and never blitz -- two theories incontrovertibly proven, I suppose, by an anecdote per week; (2) his columns are Unabomberish in length, focus, and tone; and (3) despite being the brother of a prominent legal economist with a deep knowledge of antitrust law, he trots out his pet rant every year that the decision of one entity (the NFL) to distribute one product (the ability to view all games, instead of regionally-selected ones) through one distributor (DirecTV) violates the antitrust laws (and, presumably, is economically inefficient).
It takes a lot for me to stop reading a columnist once I start, but Easterbrook is on the edge. His logical fallacies have risen to an all-time high this year.
Posted by: Jeremy at November 3, 2007 12:59 AM