Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

The Onion didn't invent fake news, but to a generation of would-be ersatz journalists, it may as well have. And as the Beatles spawned a million garage bands, so the Onion has spawned a million garage fake news sites. Of course, sports news has gotten into the act as well. Are they worth reading?

What follows here is a handy-dandy guide to sports satire sites. Instead of a star rating, each site gets rated on a scale of one to four onions — after all, these stick-and-ball humorists are competing to be the Onion of sports. I feel uniquely qualified to weigh in, given that I've dabbled in fake sports. I'd give myself two onions.

Sports Pickle

Proprietor: DJ Gallo, a former public relations toady from Baltimore who's become King of All Fake Sports Media.

Updated: Weekly.

Sample headline: "Dick Vitale Excited About Getting Inoperable Brain Tumor."

Review: Sports Pickle is the grand-toddler of them all among U.S.-based fake sports news sites, having premiered in November 2001. It's been the funniest of any sports satire site since then, too. Longevity and quality have made Sports Pickle the best candidate for the Onion of sports. Which makes you wonder how Gallo's work for ESPN.com's Page 2 could be so wretched.

Rating: Three-and-a-half onions.

Flipside Sports

Proprietors: Guys using fake names who appear to have an intimate knowledge of 1980s-era Indiana Pacers benchwarmers, given that one calls himself "Sir Terrence of Stansbury" and another christens himself "Devon Durrant."

Updated: From what it appears, whenever they feel like it.

Sample headline: Er, this site doesn't really have them. It's mostly columnish pieces and staff roundtables.

Review: If you follow Indiana sports and/or play pickup basketball, you will laugh at lines such as, "Q: What type of player has the most potential to ruin an otherwise productive open gym? A: The mentally unstable ex-offensive lineman in a faded-out, 1993 'Delphi Football: It's a Warrior Thing...You Wouldn't Understand!' sleeveless T-shirt." If you do not follow Indiana sports and/or play pickup basketball, this site will make no sense whatsoever. It doesn't help that some pages look fuzzy, like the effect created by participating in the popular Hoosier pastime of inhaling ditch weed through a Coke can.

Rating: Three onions if you follow Indiana sports, one-and-a-half onions if you don't.

The Athletic Reporter

Proprietors: Joe Mulder on lyrics; Jameson Simmons on design, Photoshop, clavinet on "Destiny's Child singer Kelly Rowland to switch Roy Williamses."

Updated: Weekly.

Sample headline: "Adam Vinatieri's Mom Keeps Pointing Out That He Technically Made the Game-Winning Field Goal Again."

Review: The headlines in the Athletic Reporter are as funny as any in the Sports Pickle, and they tend to merge sports with pop culture ("USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett Seen Standing Outside Matt Leinart's Window Holding Up Boombox") and politics ("Bush Re-elected, Expos to Stay the Hell in Canada") better than Sports Pickle. But the Athletic Reporter gets dinged for less-than-Picklish writing in the actual stories. In some pieces, the headline is pretty much repeated as the lead of the story. If it were an NBA player, it would be a 7-footer with tremendous upside who tempts teams with potential he hasn't come close to reaching.

Rating: Two-and-a-half onions.

Sportalicious!

Proprietors: More guys using fake names. They're supposed to be funny-sounding, like "Glen Furg," except that they're not.

Updated: Weekly.

Sample headline: "NBA ALL STAR GAME: EAST OVER WEST, 721-690!"

Review: Usually, the use of frequent exclamation points is an attempt to create excitement where none would otherwise exist! (I say "usually" because the exclamation point at the end of Kick Out the Sports! is an homage!) Sportalicious! is no exception! If you think headlines with lots of !!!!s, liberal use of exaggeration and fake datelines like "North Buttock, Alaska" are the height of hilarity, this is your kind of site! Because you are a moron!

Rating: One onion.

sPERTS.net

Proprietor: Jim Margalus, a recent Missouri journalism graduate apparently looking for gainful employment.

Updated: Site says daily, though fake sports news updating comes in sPERTS. I mean, spurts.

Sample headline: "Pundit risks nothing with ‘bold prediction'"

Review: Margalus and other writers come up with some OK story ideas, but the headlines and stories themselves are no home run — more like a lazy, 300-foot pop fly to right field that a stiff headwind might blow over the fence. Like Mulder at the Athletic Reporter, Margalus also has a column and a blog. One suspects both Mulder and Margalus envy Gallo less for his humor site, and more for his ESPN.com gig.

Rating: One-and-a-half onions.

SportsGoons.

Proprietors: Keith and Christian Peterson, two ex-pat Minnesotans.

Updated: Weekly.

Sample headline: "Jose Canseco's Book Found to be Thesaurus-Enchanced."

Review: The Petersons, who like "Life in Hell's" Akbar and Jeff could be lovers or brothers or both (the site doesn't say), have the gall to crib photos of hot female athletes, cheerleaders and other cheesecake, then call them "Goon Girls." The Petersons, who probably aren't lovers if they lust for "Goon Girls," also had the gall to put out a press release saying they and their site "combine the best of ESPN and the Onion." (Here I presume they don't mean a combination of Stuart Scott and frequent use of "Area Man" in headlines.) But you laugh anyway, the same kind of I-hate-myself laugh you deliver under your breath in front of the fraternity guys you don't want to admit are funny, because they are fraternity guys.

Rating: Three onions.

The Bladder

Proprietors: Two Melbourne, Australia, companies, Media Giants and Day3, previously PowerServe Australia.

Updated: Weekly.

Sample headline: "McGrath bunny confusion."

Review: Founded around the time of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Bladder is all the sports humor rage in Australia. Of course, this country has found Yahoo Serious to be the height of hilarity, so that's not saying much. Still, it's lasted a while, so it must be doing something right. Let's put it this way: like Flipside Sports — heck, like any sports satire site — if you know what it's mocking, you're more likely to find it funny. Me, I have no idea what the Bladder is talking about. But I found that reading every story in the voice of Paul Hogan, and occasionally interjecting the phrase "now that's a knife," made the site a fair dinkum.

Rating: Four bloomin' onions if you know what "footy" is, three bloomin' onions if you use the Crocodile Dundee voice, one-and-a-half bloomin' onions if you don't.

The Becker Sports Report

Proprietor: The obviously megalomaniacal Steve Becker.

Updated: Monthly.

Sample headline: "Canseco: McGuire was a 'crack addict, too.'"

Review: At the risk of coming off like Sportalicious!, "Argh!!!!" Being satirical doesn't excuse you from misspelling Mark McGwire's name, unless it was a satire of sportswriters' awful spelling skills, which is a level of satire way too deep and subtle when you consider the rest of this site. The error is especially galling when you have an adjacent story whose humor is predicated on a player's poor grammar.

Rating: One onion.

SayItAin'tSo

Proprietors: Ken Widmann and Dan Appel, the Daryl Hall and John Oates of fake sports news.

Updated: Weekly, I think. There's no date stamp on any of the articles.

Sample headline: "Eagles Fans Thrilled for New Level of Heartbreak."

Review: I found this site rather average. But according to Widmann and Appel's agent, they have a SayItAin'tSo-themed book coming out on a Random House imprint. So what do I know?

Rating: Two onions.

The Brushback

Proprietors: None listed, so we can only assume it's put together by the mythical Sports Satire Fairy.

Updated: Weekly.

Sample headline: "Athlete rehearses forced laughter for upcoming appearance on Best Damn Sports Show Period."

Review: Satire is often seen not only as truth, but as a sort of prophecy (think Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"). On Feb. 22, the Brushback had a piece titled, "Report: Isiah Thomas About To Do Something Really Stupid." On Feb. 24, the New York Knicks' general manager made two preposterous trades for two undersized power forwards with big, fat contracts. Eerie. It took only two days for the Brushback to be proven right. As for Huxley, it's been 60-odd years, and you still can't find any soma when you need it.

Rating: Three onions.

The Sportsrag

Proprietor: Mark St. Amant, a Boston freelance writer and the patron saint of sports satire geeks.

Updated: Monthly, though February's hasn't appeared yet.

Sample headline: "Dying Boy's Last Wish to be Punched by Ron Artest."

Review: I'm sure this guy's site is funny, and he must have some sort of talent and charm to get Scribner to pay him to write a book about playing fantasy football. At this point, it's hard for me to be fair, because I've looked at so many fake sports news sites that they are starting to become a blur, except the Dutch one that promises, in the cadence of the Swedish Chef, "Humor en Babes in de Sport!"

Rating: I'll give this one three onions, and then go back to a real-life newspaper sports page to see headlines that are grounded in real events.

Like this one from the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette: "Coach hits himself with a suspension." Hmm. Maybe the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer will bring some sanity. "Boston arena may be named for Derek Jeter?"

Man, I've been looking at these satire sites for so long, I guess I can't tell the difference between real and fake sports news anymore.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.