I was thinking about Jay Mariotti last night in bed — this is completely normal, don’t judge me — and was wondering why no one had been parsing out anything outlandish or outrageous he’s written, blockquoted it and then whined about it on their blogs. (We’re very guilty of this here.)

Then I thought, well, since he isn’t knee-jerk reacting to Chicago sports as frequently anymore, it’s just not the same song and dance it used to be. The people he’s always incensed don’t have anything to get uppity about. When he’s blaming Jerry Jones for the Cowboys’ ills, instead of talking about the Blizzard of Oz, his cute nickname for Ozzie Guillen, it’s just not the same, man.

Plus, he does tend to get lost in the FanHouse fold a bit more, as they have many writers/bloggers and entries are flying through the home page daily. At the Sun-Times, he was king.

But then I read this interview he did with Real Clear Sports, and it all came rushing back like a ‘Nam flashback.

It’s my life, not theirs. I wrote 5,000 columns for them in 17 years. I wrote on holidays, spent massive amounts of time away from home. Roger Ebert, whom I’ve met once, can kiss my ass. No one gave more blood to that place than I did, and if I decide it’s going to die an imminent death, it’s my call. And based on events of the last four months, I couldn’t have been more accurate. The place is dead.

If you remember, Ebert wrote a farewell letter to Mariotti when his Sun-Times tenure ended, in which he told Mariotti: “on your way out, don’t let the door bang you on the ass.” There is a lot of ass talk going on between them.

To Jay’s credit, I do actually agree with him in that the Sun-Times was a bit childish about his firing, going so far as to use its newsprint in the following days after his firing to trash him with bits by his co-workers and readers alike. That wasn’t very professional. But when you deal with Mariotti, sometimes it’s hard to be professional.

Because as you can see, he rarely carries himself in such a manner.