In fact, in its list of the 25 Douchiest Colleges in America, Ohio State came in at #19, right between other notable instidouchions of higher learning Morehouse (#20) and Boston U. (#18).  

And wouldn’t you know it, the tagline for Buckeye douchiness according to GQ is “The Excessive-School-Pride-Douche.” GQ also says:

Affectations: Dressing for class each morning as if you were the offensive-line coach; writing prison letters to Maurice Clarett.
Overheard at Buckeye career-building workshop: ”You can put ‘Won a national championship’ on a résumé, right?” 
Most likely to: Suffocate a hapless Boilermakers fan with a giant foam Number One after offhand comment about how the marching band’s “Script Ohio” wasn’t all that impressive.
Honorable-mention excessive-school-pride institutions: Duke, Michigan, Texas, Penn State, Yeshiva University.

For the record — and this should surprise no one — Indiana did not make list.  Purdue, however, somehow escaped GQ’s wrath.  How about the “Wears-Plaid-Every-Day-Douche”…that would have worked.

Other notables on the douchy college list:

• #25 Virginia
• #24 Texas
• #17 Chicago
• #16 USC
• #15 Notre Dame
• #14 Arizona State
• #13 Georgia
• #12 Phoenix
• #10 Colorado
• #4 Harvard
• #3 Princeton
• #2 Duke
• #1 Brown

* – Kirk Herbstreit photo credit: Year 2

First, on Friday, Midwest Sports Fans obliterated its previous high for visits in a day on Friday with just over 12,000. Today, we’re on pace for well over 5,000 visits. Huge thanks go out to Deadspin, MLB Trade Rumors, and everyone else who linked to us yesterday. Plus, I have to thank the great writers I’m fortunate enough to work with here at MSF for creating such good content. (Although, based on some of the comments, I have failed in my duties as editor. My apologies…sometimes I have to sacrifice meticulousness to get posts up in the middle of the busy workday. I’ll pay more attention from here on out…)

But, even as excited as the facts of the previous paragraph have made me, my excitement reached a whole new level when I checked out Pro Football Talk just a minute ago.

Apparently, well according to an Internet report (*gasp*) anyway, Jay Mariotti is…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

…aww hell, you already know: a douche bag.

That’s right, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk has joined the chorus of sports fans, and pretty much every other human on Earth other than than Jay Mariotti’s mom, who thinks that Jay Mariotti is a douche bag. Here is an excerpt:

Now we’ve really seen it all.

Jay Mariotti is one of the more recent writers to jump from the slowly-but-surely sinking ship that is the newspaper industry. Mariotti now writes columns for FanHouse, which started as a fan-driven megablog that no one really read all that much and has evolved into a higher-quality operation..that we’re not really sure whether anyone reads.

So Mariotti, whom a lot of people regard as a douchebag, apparently has brought that douchebag newspaper guy attitude to the Internet.

You will have to head over to Pro Football Talk to read more, but suffice it to say that my sarcastic use of the phrase Internet report above was an homage to to Florio’s post about King Douche himself.

The other great part about Florio calling Mariotti out is that it gives me an excuse to post this photo again, taken from Jay Mariotti’s mom’s basement the day he started blogging for FanHouse:

Looks like I might have some competition now for Google searches on the phrase “Jay Mariotti douche bag.” Bring it on Florio. I can share the front page.

Nope, the misery inflicted upon the sports world today was actually worse than what the hypothetical sum of all of the aforementioned catastrophes combined. And you probably already know what I am talking: Jay Mariotti posted his first column at FanHouse.

I discussed this a few days back when Deadspin broke the news that Jay Mariotti had signed up to be a “columnist” at FanHouse. I had a little fun with Photoshop, sent out a bunch of tips so I would have other people to commiserate with, and mentally prepared myself for being part of a blogosphere that new includes Jay Mariotti.

And then I waited for the first vitriolic, back-stabbing, contradictory, and nonsensical article from America’s most hated sportswriter. And, as to be expected, Jay did not disappoint. Check out Deadspin’s summary of the first Jay Mariotti column at FanHouse, and feel free to follow the link they provide to view the column for yourself.

I refuse to link you to the Mariotti column, as it is my goal to never be the linking source for one referral to the new Mariotti blog. Ozzie Guillen and Hawk Harrelson would be proud of me for this; and while I realize that there are many people who view Ozzie and Hawk in the same light as Mariotti, I respectfully and strongly disagree. Perhaps my die-hard love for the Chicago White Sox clouds objective judgment, but that is the last caveat you will get from me. I don’t like Jay Mariotti, I never have, and I know that millions of sports fans across America (including and especially these guys) agree with me and that we all have very sound and rational reasons for our feelings about Jay Mariotti.

I almost feel like I’m wasting my time and your time writing any more about Jay Mariotti’s first column at FanHouse. So I will just leave you with an image that pretty sums up the reputation that Jay Mariotti has earned over his many years of being an incendiary and ridiculous clown of a sports writer.

The image above is a screen capture taken earlier today of the front page of BallHype. Anyone who frequents BallHype, as I do, knows that very rarely do posts get hyped down on BallHype. Typically, if someone dislikes or does not care about a post, it is just ignored. And as you can see from the vast majority of posts listed on the front page today, this trend held true.

Until, of course, you reached the BallHype entry for the first Jay Mariotti column at FanHouse.

Look at the way at the bottom of the image and you will notice an entry with a drop shadow behind it and a frightening picture of a smiling turd beside it. Then look at the stats: 20 hype-ups, and 8 hype-downs. 8! I do not recall ever seeing more than two hype-downs on a single post. Incredibly, I was actually surprised that Mariotti’s post had not received more hype-downs than it did.

Anyway, the weather is cold and gloomy here in Dallas, with near-freezing temperatures and frozen rain in the forecast for the evening. The meteorologists are blaming an “arctic front” or some BS like that. I blame Jay Mariotti.

Thank you for commiserating with me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an article to go hype-down.

(Update: Just checked a few hours after posting this and the BallHype entry about Jay Mariotti’s first FanHouse post is now at 10 hype-downs. Congratulations on your triumphant return to sports writing Jay!)

And apparently Jay Mariotti has already retreated to his mom’s basement in his underwear to write his first post for FanHouse:

(Photo Art by Midwest Sports Fans)

You may remember that back when Jay Mariotti resigned from the Chicago Sun-Times, I joined the chorus of sports fans basically telling Jay not let the door him in the ass on the way out of Chicago. Famed movie critic Roger Ebert actually said this specifically.

Our posts about Jay Mariotti provided me with the accomplishment that I take the most pride in during Midwest Sports Fans’ five months of existence: if you google “Jay Mariotti douche bag”, Midwest Sports Fans is the #1 hit. No matter what else we ever achieve here at MSF, it is quite possible that nothing will top that.

I have to run, but I do plan to add more to this post later. The irony of Jay Mariotti joining FanHouse and becoming a member of the blogging community to which I just recently joined, as well as the dread of Jay Mariotti having a national voice again, simply begs for more exposition.

Until then, take part in the poll and give us your thoughts on Jay Mariotti’s douchebaggery:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

And I’m back.

In the specific interest of completely piling on Jay Mariotti, let’s take a look at some of the memorable blog posts that have been dedicated to Chicago’s worst ever sports writer.

First off, how about the official announcement from Chicago Sun-Times Editor in Chief Michael Cooke when Mariotti announced his resignation from the Sun-Times. The announcement includes this little gem, proving that Jay Mariotti had endeared himself to his former colleagues about as much as he did to sports fans nationwide:

We wish Jay well and will miss him — not personally, of course — but in the sense of noticing he is no longer here, at least for a few days.

Sounds they were really broken up about Jay’s departure.

And how about this amazing 2005 Jay Mariotti Year in Review, written by Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune. Here are a few of the highlights, taken verbatim from Mariotti’s column during the White Sox drive to the 2005 World Series title:

April 7th – (The Sox are) Winning Lucky. Groovy as Sox life seems right now, let me assure you that this is no formula for a division title.

April 23rd – Guillen is only confirming what his critics said: He’s too nuts, off the wall and out of control.

May 15th – (The Sox) have the sweetest rotation in the sport ….And while I’m not about to predict they’ll be the first local team in 187 collective seasons to win a World Series, they are built to last deep into September.

June 7th – I can safely say the Sox won’t win a World Series as long as (Jerry Reinsdorf) owns them.

June 24th – Guillen’s feistiness has a magical effect on the Sox.

June 30th – Williams insists the Sox don’t need major roster surgery, but I couldn’t disagree more.

August 17th – You might be under the influence of Hawk Harrelson, but for non-homers who analyze baseball at face value, the Sox are vulnerable because their attack lacks punch.

September 1st – Who is Geoff Blum, anyway?

September 18th – If there is any sense of mercy, the White Sox will be blacked out the rest of the season so a terminally cursed city needn’t witness The Mother of All Collapses.

September 20th – Other cities host the World Series. Chicago hosts Choke Job Theater.

September 27th – Just why are the Sox playing for October when they clearly don ‘ t belong there?

October 4th – I’ve been trying to tell out-of-towners that Guillen has been a terrific manager.

October 21st – They’ve won with the kind of smart, unselfish, high-character, pitching-and-defense charm that defies everything we’ve seen from baseball in recent seasons….The Sox are about pure baseball.

October 27th – What they did, thanks to the feisty leadership of Guillen and foresight of Williams, was write a new blueprint on how baseball might be played in the post-steroids era.

Is your head spinning yet from all of the contradictions? And from all of the horribly erroneous predictions and comments? And seriously, these few excerpts don’t even do the entire post justice. Here is the link again, go read it: Jay Mariotti 2005 Year in Review.

And how about Jay Mariotti on Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith? You guessed it. More blowharding and more contradictions. And once again we have Eric Zorn, my new personal hero, to thank for pointing it out:

All I know is, a man named Lovie cannot coach the world-famous Chicago Bears …Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, Jan. 14, 2004

Lovie Smith, racking up Coach of the Year votes by the week…Sun-Time columnist Jay Mariotti, November 14, 2005

Honestly, I could probably do this all night long and never get bored. I realize that I have made some pretty strong statements and been proven wrong numerous times. However, unlike Dr. Douchebaggery himself, I usually point out my mistakes and take responsibility for them. Jay Mariotti simply stands in defiant opposition of any critics, wafting in the sweet (at least to him) smell of his putrid, gaseous hot air.

So, congratulations to FanHouse for bringing in Jay Mariotti. I’m sure he will draw a lot of traffic simply because of his name and fame, and his willingness to say anything at any time, without any hint of shame when his thoughts, predictions, and diatribes are proven to be horribly wrong or off base.

I wonder how the guys over at Jay the Joke feel about this?

As I was writing my playoff scenario post this morning, and thinking about how poorly the White Sox have played in September, it got me thinking: is Jay Mariotti the reason?

You have to understand, I hate Jay Mariotti. He is the definition of a douche bag and I was ecstatic when he left the Sun-Times, so much so that I thought the city of Chicago should have thrown a parade in celebration of such a momentous occasion of civic good fortune. But did Jay Mariotti leave one last flaming bag of dog shit on the doorstep of U.S. Cellular Field before leaving the Windy City?

What the hell am I talking about? Well, look at the numbers:

The announcement of Jay Mariotti’s departure from the Sun-Times hit the Internet on August 27th. On that day, the White Sox went into their game against the Baltimore Orioles with a record of 76-56. We were in first place, feeling good, playing well, and looking like a team that could play deep into October. Later that evening, the White Sox were shellacked by the Baltimore Orioles 11-3. Carlos Quentin had been given a day off, but had not yet been lost for the season. Since August 27th, the White Sox are 10-18, have seen certain AL MVP Carlos Quentin be lost for the year as a result of a freak accident, have lost five in a row at the end of September to fall 1/2 game behind Minnesota, and have seen a once harmonious locker room turn into a high-anxiety, low chemistry place where belief, confidence, and cameraderie seem to dwindle by the day.

I wrote a post about this week being the determining factor as to whether or not I retire the Jim Thome Curse that I feel has plagued the White Sox since Thome’s arrival and the jettisoning of Aaron Rowand after the 2005 World Series title. But now that I delve deeper into the reasons for our September collapse, it is becoming more clear that The Curse of the Douche Bag may be the more nefarious culprit for our swoon. Jay Mariotti cursed Chicago sports on a daily basis for years as a Sun-Time columnist. Now that he is gone, it seems that he has continued to curse his most hated rival – Ozzie Guillen – with some sort of evil witchcraft that has left our South Siders reeling.

Well damnit White Sox, we cannot give King Douche Bag the satisfaction of being able to watch our season spiral down toilet in a depressing September flush. Mark Buehrle has the opportunity to step up today and provide a huge boost in the quest to end The Curse of the Douche Bag and the Jim Thome Curse. Somehow, despite our poor play in September, we still control our own destiny. We can win today, beat Detroit, and then get one more game against Minnesota at home to make the playoffs. It’s getting harder by the day, but I still believe.

The question is, do the White Sox? I think they do…and there is no way The Curse of the Douche Bag will keep us from playing October baseball.

www.MichaelPhelpsIsADoucheBag.com

Somebody did it. I voted “no” personally (results when i posted this; 20 yes, 3 no), but click above if you want to place your vote. It’s not vote or die, but it is fun. Also I believe other So-and-so-isadouchebag.com sites need to start now because of this and create a trend.

I still want to create FireTressel.com just to piss people off, so I understand the motivation behind the Michael Phelps one.

If you could start one So-and-so-isadouchebag.com who would it be and why? Please leave your comment.

Good riddance is the sentiment across the board from writers, bloggers, players, coaches, and front offices in good ole Chi-town. Like we need to keep running our mouths about one of the stupidest and egotistical writers in my lifetime. But I thought an article in the Sun-Times from his former colleagues was very interesting, if not just pure true journalism, which was something Jay made the Sun-TImes Sports section lack.

As Jay Mariotti walks away from his last newspaper job until he dies, his reasoning and attitude is the same old Jay that we know; idiotic, illogical, and somewhat back stabbing. It is funny to me reading quotes from the Sun-Times editor slamming Jay when they let that asshole write whatever he wanted without entering a clubhouse or locker room in almost two decades.

Do you smell that? The horrible stench of a weasel is finally gone after 17 years. And that stale newspaper ink smell is back, and well…..it never smelled so good. And I was a paper boy for five years.

Chicago Celebrates Resignation of Jay Mariotti

The city of Chicago has announced that it will hold a parade in celebration of Jay Mariotti’s departure from the Chicago Sun-Times. Parade sponsors include the White Sox, Cubs, Bulls, Bears, and all citizens of Chicago.

Chicago, IL – Word broke late last night that notorious Chicago sportswriter Jay Mariotti, a future first ballot inductee into the Turd Hall of Shame, was resigning from his post as Sports Blowhard at the Chicago Sun-Times. Unfortunately Jay the Joke, as he is often referred, made no mention of giving up his seat at the Roundtable of Nonsense otherwise known as ESPN’s Around the Horn.

According to longtime Chicago sports fan Jevin Morriline, today’s announcement was “an act of divine intervention proving the unyielding benevolence of God.” It appears as if Morriline is not alone in sharing such a feeling

The city of Chicago, led by Mayor Ozzie Guillen and Secretary of Ducksnort Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, have announced that plans are being developed for a city-wide parade to celebrate the departure of Jay Mariotti.

The proposed route for the parade would begin at U.S. Cellular Field and end a few blocks North of City Hall. It is the same route the 2005 Chicago White Sox went on when they won a World Series that Jay Mariotti never thought was possible.

The following is an official statement made by Mayor Ozzie Guillen and released to Midwest Sports Fans this afternoon:

“F&%k Yay Mariotti. Yay is a piece of $h!t and a idiot and the whole f&%king city of Chee-cago is happy to f&%king see that motherf&%ker go.”

Hawk Harrelson could not be reached for comment. However, sources close to the batting glove inventor and long-time admirer of Ted Williams, Rusty Greer, and George Brett claim that Hawk spent most of the day skipping around the basepaths at U.S. Cellular field shouting “He Gone” to a joyous, melodic beat.

The reasons for Mariotti’s departure are unknown. Some have speculated that he was afraid of walking out of his house and his very rational fear finally got to him.

According to one source, Mariotti had been having a recurring nightmare in which he walked out of his house to leave for work and was jumped by Ozzie Guillen, Lou Piniella, Jerry Reinsdorf and pretty much every other Chicago sports figure of the past two decades, all of whom have felt the wrath of Jay Mariotti’s putrid drivel that was passed along by the Sun-Times as sportswriting.

There are others who believe that Mariotti’s father had a large hand in his decision. Theologians agree that a Cubs victory in the World Series, shockingly a realistic possibility if Rich Harden can somehow stay healthy, would bring about the Apocalypse. At such a point in time, Satan will return to Earth for his favorite son. However, Satan refuses to be only the second most hated being walking among humanity.

According to sources close to the douchebag, Jay Mariotti was pressured by Satan to perform an act that would “bring great joy to the world at large.” The thought was that this would reduce the intense level of hatred projected upon Mariotti from sports fans everywhere.

Rather than do something good for someone else, however, Mariotti’s solution was to shine the limelight on himself one more time and resign on the even of a slow news day so that all of the attention would be on him; but despite this inherent selfishness, Jay Mariotti did succeed in bringing joy to all of mankind.

“Even I wanted to kick his ass sometimes,” said Mahatma Gandhi. “Heaven help whatever city he terrorizes next. Perhaps he will just go away forever.”

That, unfortunately, is not likely. The reason given by Jay Mariotti for his resignation, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune and first noticed by Midwest Sports Fans on Deadspin.com, is that sports journalism is much more focused on the web as opposed to hardcopy newspapers. Mariotti claims that he is now “talking with a lot of Web sites.” It is unclear if the Web sites say anything back or if Jay Mariotti’s computer just sits there silently wishing he would shut up like the rest of us do.

As Jevin Morriline said, “Leave it to Jay Marrioti to claim that he can communicate with Web sites. That pompous son of a Lupica probably thinks he can communicate with animals and Woody Paige also.”

Ozzie Guillen and Hawk Harrelson reportedly will announce final plans for the Jay Mariotti – He Gone! Parade before the weekend.

[UPDATE: According to official White Sox source, Ozzie Guillen laughed at the notion of a parade for Jay Mariotti upon reading this press release. He then proceeded to leave tonight’s game against Baltimore to seek out the writer of this completely fabricated story to kick his ass for making up quotes.]