I Wish Your House was Burning Jim Rome.

When I was in college a couple friends and I briefly had a sports talk radio show on the local college station. Every guy enjoys a good sports debate/screaming match so we figured why not take our standard Friday night drunk argument to the airwaves? Our show was rated slightly lower than Sunday night indie rock hour, but whatever for the most part we had a good yelling our warped viewpoints over the AM radio for an hour a week while our 17 loyal campus fans that were too stoned to change the dial listened in. Of course this type of forum was not an original idea on our part. There are sports talk radio shows all across America. Many of these amateur sports debaters wrote or screamed their way to a national sports debate forum on ESPN radio or better yet the World Wide Leader's actual TV network. For the most part I tune into these shows and enjoy hearing debate of the weekend's top sports headlines. The one exception to this of course is the obnoxious cock gobbler pictured left: Jim Fucking Rome.

Jim Rome is a total dickhead. The whole point of sports talk radio shows to me as I iplied earlier is the concept of a good old fashioned debate. Couple of fat armchair quarterbacks sitting around shooting the shit about why your favorite franchise is 0-3. One guy blames the coach. Other guy blames the quarterback. Whatever. You the loyal listener/viewer get to sit at home and decide whose view is less nonsensical. That's entertainment. That's "Mike and Mike in the morning." That's "PTI." Well what if you just get some shithead who gets a show all to himself and gets to tell everyone in the world what the fuck is up with nobody across from him to tell him he's bat-shit crazy? His opinion is the gospel and you will all listen to it.Well then you my friend would be listening to Jim Rome's forum for spewing lunacy: "Rome is Burning."

"Rome is Burning" is a fucking horrible show. It would be bad enough if Jim Rome just had a national radio show. That would piss me enough. Well now he has a goddamn TV show. It comes on right after Sportscenter and NFL live, and right before Around the Horn and "PTI" (all shows I actually enjoy). So inevitably I'm sitting around on my couch with ESPN on surfing the web or doing some homework or whatever, when I realize that I've been listening to "Rome is Burning" for 20 minutes. Goddamit. And I have to now listen till the end of the show because there is nothing on in the mid-afternoon. I don't feel like switching to the last 10 minutes of fucking All my Children or a King of Queens re-run, and missing the start of an ESPN talk show I actually like.

Jim Rome's afternoon rant programming can best be described as "The O'Reilley Factor" for sports. You see Jim Rome never actually discusses the day's top sports stories. He just rants about what is wrong with the picture based on his expert opinion. Your team lost because their quarterback is a crybaby pussy. Your favorite athlete got a DUI because they are an irresponsible child that doesn't take his job seriously. He will then address them directly (over a media forum and not to their face) and tell them that they need to be accountable for their actions. A typical Jim Rome headline breakdown will go something like this:

"Hey Carmelo Anthony. Don't tell us you didn't want to be traded. In that case why does everyone think you want to be traded? Why are there so many rumors about you demanding a trade? Clearly you wanted a trade and now you're hiding behind a podium trying to blame the media for your selfish demands. Don't be a liar. Be a man and act accountable for your actions!"

You see Jim Rome likes to publically ridicule athletes for their every action in the most overblown way possible. Where another sports pundit might say "Tony Romo is gonna need to step up his play this December," Jim Rome will shout "Hey Romo be a man. Start being a leader. Until you learn to start doing that for your organization and not being just an overpaid choke artist nobody will respect you as a so called ELITE quarterback." Jim Rome yells everything in a stern judgmental tone like a father disciplining his delinquent 16 year old son. He is an expert on all sports issues, both on and off the field and is going to yell at you when you're not being accountable for either your play or your moral behavior.

Well I'd like to address Jim Rome: "Hey Jim Rome. You have never played a fucking professional sport in your life. So why the hell are you such an authority on how a player should talk about their impending trade? Or when they're not being enough of a leader. Have you ever been in their shoes? Oh you haven't? Well then shut the fuck up and stop acting so high and mighty. You are no better than the crazed Rush Limbaughs or internet bloggers of the world (myself included). You just happened to blow the right people in the industry and get your own show where you can yell about who's the most useless human in the world of sports with nobody across from you to say you're an idiot. I hope one of those athletes you judge on a daily basis shows up to your set with a crew of his homies and sets fire to your set with a couple of canisters of kerosene. That would be the best episode of "Rome is BURNING" ever. (pun intended)