"While you breathe easier, I cuss and snort and demand answers.”

The opening line of Jay’s column this morning actually provides a nice synopsis of his writing style:  cussing and snorting.

The cause of Jay’s latest tirade?  Master of hindsight and second guessing that he is, Jay thinks Brian Urlacher should have been out of the game when he suffered the injury that caused Chicago’s collective heart to skip a beat.

Let’s say Lovie Smith had yanked Urlacher and he hadn’t injured his toe. (Toe jam football, as Mariotti calls it, in reference to the Beatles’ “Come Together” ... am I crazy or has Jay been spending a little too much quality time with the old record collection?) Mariotti would probably write a column reaming Lovie for giving up the game.

Sure, with time winding down the game was pretty much over.  But after the Cardinals game, would you really want to call any game out of reach, especially down only two scores?  One big play from Urlacher and suddenly the Bears are an onsides kick away from another miracle comeback.

That sequence probably plays out once out of 1,000 games, but you keep playing for that one.  It can happen, just ask James Allen about his Hail Mary catch in 2001.  Or the Cardinals about Monday Night Football.

Of course, since hope and optimism are about as foreign to Jay as a locker room, his perspective is hardly surprising.

He’s fortunate the Bears are starting to hit some adversity. He was really running out of subject matter there for a while.  Now he has a hop back in his tiny steps.  He’ll probably write a Bears column every day this week just to release all that repressed, pent up negativity.

In all honesty, everyone knew the Bears early schedule was soft.  Seven out of eight wins is a nice cushion to start with.  Now the real season starts and I couldn’t be more excited.

So is Jay, but for different reasons.  Stay tuned for more cussing and snorting.

Well, friends, the season is over.  The Bears have no shot at a Super Bowl and Rex Grossman has no future in the NFL.  It has finally been revealed that the idea of going undefeated was a bunch of “hokum” and now we must accept the fate of going one-and-out in the playoffs.  Or at least, that’s what the all-knowledgeable Jay Mariotti is trying to tell us.

Jay has a new punching bag on this team, and he has hung the pathetic nickname “Rex the Hex” on him.  Yes, folks, Jay has taken the difficult position of being overly critical of a player who has started less than a season’s worth of games.  He even went so far as to name drop Cade McNown in his bashing of Rex:

I saw Cade McNown at a downtown restaurant recently, but who knew he cloned his No. 8 from six years ago and hung it on Rex’s shoulders?

Wow, Jay!  Cade McNown!  You must be hanging at all the hot spots!  You’re so hip- you really have your finger on the pulse of Chicago, you short little bastard.  And yes.  Rex Grossman is the next Cade McNown.  He obviously has no future in this league.  I say we waive him.  Jay even has a replacement in mind: 

...the calls for a proven Brian Griese will begin.

Wow.  “Proven” is the adjective you go for with Brian Griese?  What exactly has been “proven” about him?  That he is a mediocre quarterback who is over thirty years old and has been passed around the league like a hot potato?  The Bears have a future to think about, Jay.  They aren’t going to overreact after every bad game.

As we all know, Rex wasn’t great yesterday.  He had a bad game.  But we have the ability to look at the bigger picture and see that calls to replace the young quarterback would only be made by, well… short and whiney sports columnists with an inferiority complex.  We understand that his favorite receiver was injured early, leaving Rex to throw to someone who was obviously on a different page.  We understand that a rookie punt returner fumbled the ball inside the ten yard line, making this much more of a blowout than it actually was.  We understand that the Bears are 7-1 and have a stranglehold on their division.  But most of all, we understand that they probably just weren’t pumped up for a game against a crappy team.

Remember last month when Jay wrote a glowing column about Lovie (the same one where he misquoted Rex Grossman)?  The gist of that column was that Lovie would keep this team fired up - even against less than stellar teams.  Once again, Jay was wrong.

Jay has truly arrived.

No less than Bill Simmons (ESPN’s ‘Sports Guy’, I highly recommend reading him if you don’t already), in describing Boston Globe columnist Ron Borges, another ego-driven blowhard of a columnist, used the phrase “Mariotti-like villain.”

Here’s the passage from his NFL picks column today:

“On Wednesday afternoon, I made an appearance on Mike Felger’s radio show back in Boston. Co-hosting with Felger was the Globe’s Ron Borges, a Mariotti-like villain back home for his anti-Belichick columns and comments (and the way he revels in the attention). Everyone who complains about Borges fails to realize that he’s doing it specifically so that they’ll fuss and moan about him. It’s 95 percent schtick and 5 percent residual bitterness because Belichick benched and eventually traded his best source on the team (Drew Bledsoe). And it’s working. Boston Magazine even ran a profile of Borges in their current issue.”

That’s quite an accomplishment.  All he had to do was drop Mariotti’s name and all of America knew precisely the type he was talking about.  Our little man is officially a national phenomenon.

Which brings me to another aspect of Jay and other columnists of his ilk. As Simmons suggests (a topic which we’ve also discussed in this forum), the whole reason Jay has carved out a career for himself is his ability to get sports fans like ourselves to despise him.  It’s a sad way to have to establish yourself, but you have to admit it has worked for him.

I’ve pondered this subject before, leading to some existential questioning as to whether this little blog, on some level, only plays into Jay’s game.

That’s part of the reason we’ve tried to discuss not only Mariotti’s asinine opinions (which do provide plenty of fodder), but also the poor quality of his work and the shallow level of his sports knowledge.

If the man is going to keep his job here in Chicago (which for the time being seems more than likely given his new contract), at least we can try to expose the pathetic methods by which he keeps himself in business.

As Deadspin kindly put it, we’re going to stay down here in the trenches, doing the Lord’s work.

After I plowed through Jay’s borderline unreadable rambling about Jordan and Kim Jong-Il…

Seriously, what was that?

That’s not a rhetorical question.  I’m honestly curious what he was trying to accomplish.  Foreign policy analysis?  Humor?  Whatever it was, it failed.  Miserably.

Anyway, as I got deeper into the column I was overcome by deja vu.

Hadn’t we heard this before? And hadn’t I written about it.

That’s right, today’s Mariotti column was essentially a warmed-over version of what he wrote when the Jordan joined the Charlotte Bobcats in June.  With just a little Kim Jong-Il on the side.

As nice as it would be to have Jordan around, the Bulls seem to be heading in the right direction without him.  Since he doesn’t appear to be coming anytime soon, sitting around pining for him seems a bit counterproductive.

Also, I’m not convinced Jordan will ever be great as an executive the way he was as a player.  In fact, here’s what I wrote after Jay’s last “We Miss You Michael” love letter in the June 27 post “Desperate Column From A Desperate Man”

“Great players rarely make the transition to great coaches or front office personnel. While exceptions, like the NBA logo Jerry West, certainly exist, they are far from the norm. Role players like Phil Jackson, or the Scott Skiles-John Paxson combo running the Bulls, for whatever reason, seem to make the transition better. Just ask Knick fans about Isaiah Thomas.”

Any fan in Chicago, of course, would welcome Jordan back in an artery-clogged heartbeat.  But for now most fans are interested in the current squad.  For someone who always admonishes Bears fans for living in 1985, he certainly seems unable to kick his MJ fetish.

Part of the column, obviously, was another chance to skewer Jerry Reinsdorf for allegedly being the reason Jordan isn’t back with the Bulls.  And I’m sure he has something to do with it.  But please, next time you want to needle your nemisis, Jay, at least try to bring a new topic to the table.

The Bears and the Bulls won their most recent games by a combined 73 points.

Are we in the right city?  This place feels like some dreamlike alternate universe.  Kind of like Dorothy, except if the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion were three overweight guys eating sausages.

Speaking of...I’m sure you have all seen the SNL skit where Jordan made his appearance with Da Superfans.  Jordan goes into a discussion of his charitable endeavors while Farley and company’s thoughts drift off to “Da Bears...Da Bulls...Bears...Sausage...Ditka...Bears.”

I was riding the el this morning, and my thought patterns are growing eerily similar. Is that a sign of a problem?

As some of you may have read, I argued before the Miami game that the Bulls would be a much better offensive team than people realize.  I didn’t expect them to come together that quickly.

Jay has yet to weigh in on the Bulls.  I imagine something is coming tomorrow or Friday.  It will be interesting to see what he has to say, since we all know he has read Jaythejoke’s take.  He may be referencing us as we speak.  Hi Jay!

The Bulls could still lay an egg in Orlando tonight, but beating the defending champs on opening night by 42 (almost triple the previous record of 15) has to count for SOMETHING, doesn’t it?  It’s not like the Heat lost any key players, either.

If the Bulls continue their hot start, Jay could set a new standard for number of columns urging Chicago fans to restrain themselves written in a three-month period.  I can picture him standing on a street corner like Kevin Bacon in Animal House screaming “REMAIN CALM ... ALL IS WELL!” as crazed Chicagoans revel in the streets.

Just kidding.  Jay doesn’t go outside on account of his general disdain for humanity.