I originally e-mailed Chuck Klosterman because I wanted to, in part, interview him about his new novel, Downtown Owl. However, he had two stipulations: 1) that I ask him a maximum of six questions and 2) I only ask him questions he’d never been asked before. As such, here was my attempt to do so. Read on for his thoughts on sports blogs, a Palin vs. Obama basketball match, the Olympics and AMC’s “Mad Men.”

Q: Back in your days at SPIN, you wrote a column identifying the most accurately rated bands of all-time — eschewing the “overrated” or “underrated” meme once and for all. Using similar criteria, who are the five most accurately rated athletes of all time?

A: This is a great, great question. In descending order, they are:

5.) Phil Simms: A very good, non-Hall of Fame caliber quarterback.
4.) Mike Schmidt: The finest third baseman of all-time, but never regarded as one of the all-time 10 best players overall.
3.) O.J. Simpson: Probably the third-greatest pure rusher in collegiate and NFL history, but — because his statistics have been long surpassed — he would have been a forgotten footnote. By murdering his ex-wife, Simpson remains historically relevant as a person (and thereby accurately rated as an athlete).
2.) Craig Ehlo: Bring up Ehlo’s name in a conversation and somebody will always say, “You know, in retrospect, Ehlo was actually okay.” This is true.
1.) Tiger Woods.

Q: We know you read – or have at least run across — the Big Lead. What other sports blogs do you read and why?

A: There is no reason not to read any blog, simply because they are free. That said, there is no single blog that is “required reading” every day, or even every week. This has become more and more true as the blogosphere has expanded. All the information is shared. If something legitimately interesting happens on any specific blog, it’s immediately going to be linked to on 200 other sites, so there’s no need to consistently go to any one source. That’s the biggest philosophical difference between old media and new media: If a sportswriter at the Washington Post breaks a story the New York Times doesn’t have, the Post wins that day — the NYT will have to play catch-up the following morning, and readers will start to see the Post as a better product. But blogs aren’t like that. If something on The Big Lead gets linked to Deadspin, nobody who finds it on Deadspin gives a shit how it got here or where it came from originally. Following the link is no different (and no less efficient) than reading the original content in its original setting. The experience is identical. Both sites win, as does any other random blog that connects to the content. They all share the same traffic. Unlike journalism, blogging is not competitive — its cooperative. Networking is far more essential than writing or reporting. Which is why I don’t need to read any specific sports blog on a day-to-day basis; I will eventually get all that information without even trying. It aggregates itself.

The problem, of course, is that I don’t even want most of the information I end up acquiring. The main thing I want from the sports blogosphere is statistical number crunching. That should be its primary objective. But what I usually find are unfunny people trying to be sarcastic and edgy. In 1998, it was rare to find sports-media personalities who put a lot of emphasis on being entertaining — there was Kenny Mayne and Norman Chad and Bill Simmons, but almost everybody else was hyper-straight and weirdly serious. As such, the handful of guys who tried to be funny were legitimately refreshing. They seemed different, and they had more voice. But now EVERYBODY wants to be funny. That’s all there is. You can’t blog about any subject without making some sort of obvious joke, and that kind of thinking has spilled into the mainstream media. I guess what I’m really waiting for is a legitimately smart guy who wants to write a totally unentertaining sports blog.

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