It’s been an interesting 24 hours for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. He let his sense of humor see the light of day on last night’s Daily Show Chatroulette satire, and now he’s already got another notch in the belt of being more down to earth than evidence sometimes suggests.

The target this time is ESPN’s Bill Simmons – a.k.a. The Sports Guy – and his far-reaching Tiger-Woods’s-Comeback-is-Like-Muhammed-Ali’s column that went up on Wednesday on ESPN.com. Update: Simmons responds!

Keith’s response was posted on hist Major League Baseball-supported blog:

I promised no politics here and I stick to it. But I never said anything about never mentioning other sports, although I think I’ll start that rule about a paragraph from now. If you’d like to read the most poorly-informed conclusion I’ve come across in sports media this year, you have your link. Proceed with caution. In short, it is the contention that the comeback of Tiger Woods will be more difficult than the one Muhammad Ali faced in the 1960’s. If the writer can let me know when Woods is punitively drafted by the military even though he is about eight years older than almost all the other draftees, I’ll begin to take him seriously. In the interim I am again left to marvel how somebody can rise to a fairly prominent media position with no discernible insight or talent, save for an apparent ability to mix up a vast bowl of word salad very quickly.

Holy crap, this has me giddy. Every now and then, a part of me briefly remembers that the Sportscenter I grew up watching before school featured Mr. Olbermann as the head honcho. Pit him against Simmons and that camp of online thinkers and the Malcom Gladwell love affair? This is already a war I really would love to see. It’s almost enough to get me to watch Countdown on a Friday night.

H/t to Deadspin on the Olbermann post.

> Update: Simmons just tweeted this. Wow – game on.

KO, please know the feeling is mutual. You’re my worst case scenario for my career in 12 yrs: a pious, unlikable blowhard who lives alone. I’m furious that my Tiger column distracted America from a detailed and only mildly creepy case for Johnny Orsino’s Hall of Fame candidacy.

-SK

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