Video games frustrate the hell out of me.

Now, I rarely play them. But my roommate just got the new Madden, and he plays NBA 2K9 a lot, and I’ll get suckered into playing, and I know I’m going to lose because he has much more practice and skill, and then I get mad when I lose even though I know I’m going to lose, and then I play him again, and I lose again.

Like I said: frustrating.

But hey, look, I can do all these cool things with Derrick Rose in NBA 2K10, according to the trailer that just dropped for the game. (HT: Dime.) Now when I lose, I can lose with style. Or something.

Bill Simmons’s latest ESPN the Mag column is now available on the WWL’s Web site, and it’s one of the stranger (and least expected) numbers you’ll ever see from the ole’ Sports Guy. Why? Glad you asked.

First of all, it focuses on his dad. Which isn’t necessarily strange until you see the sports tie-in — it’s a late wrap comparing the glory that athletes get when they walk away versus someone like his father, a 33-year superintendent for New England area schools. And don’t get me wrong here: it was a great article and, frankly, pretty touching.

Making it more odd, though, is that in the final full paragraph of his piece, Simmons states that he is leaving the Mag after a lengthy period of working there:

To further close the circle: I’m retiring from this space in ESPN The Magazine after seven happy years. Like my father and his superintendency, The Magazine was never an ideal match for me — I hate advance deadlines and word counts — and yet, I couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out. It’s just time for me to try some new things, that’s all. And you have to know when it’s time. I learned that from my father.

It’s a weird, albeit appropriate way I suppose, to retire — and, actually, it’s a better way to go out (actually announcing it) than you usually see in scenarios like this, where Simmons would simply stop writing. And I guess he’s planning on focusing more on his ESPN.com and podcasting work, which also makes sense. Remember, he still churns out plenty of columns that only show up online.

As Simmons notes, word counts and deadlines aren’t his forte, and hey, I feel him on that. But it’s definitely going to make the Mag a little bit less exciting when it shows up (still riding that free fantasy screwup account, y’all!) even if it’s yet another validation as to why Internet is better than print. Or something like that.

In my apparently ongoing responsibilities as MPSB’s resident soccer beat blogger — I would have written beat “reporter,” but come on, me? report? ha! — I’ve noticed a trend: more people are caring about soccer. At the very least, people are more frequently crawling out of their holes to hate on soccer, which is as good an indication as any that the sport is trending upward. (Celizic strikes again, by the way. You know it’s bad when Mike Decourcy, probably the most polite writer of all-time, personally calls you out.)

Anyway, if soccer does become more popular, a lot of that popularity will have to do with ESPN czar John Skipper’s programming decisions. If ESPN gives soccer the same treatment as the NFL — especially during the World Cup in 2010 — you can bet on a sudden, if not prolonged, spike in popularity.

Fortunately for people strangely obsessed with the idea of soccer becoming popular in America, it seems that’s exactly what ESPN is going to do. The network will be doing round the clock World Cup coverage next summer. That includes 32 soft-focus personal interest features on a player from each of the tournament’s 32 teams. It also includes Chris Berman doing SportsCenter live from South Africa. Beyond being, as Spencer Hall points out, prime Chris Berman-lion-attack territory — now THAT would make soccer popular — this presents an essential conundrum: Will ESPN somehow overexpose soccer before most people even know what soccer is? I say yes! And then we’ll be right back where we started, which is actually just fine with me, thanks.

Andy Murray is as recognizable a British athlete as there is. But you don’t need me to tell you that. Rick Reilly, ESPN columnist and cheesy video essayist extraordinaire can handle that task, as he does above. Yes, Reilly is examining the Brits’ newfound love affair with Murray, whose deep run into Wimbledon is the sort of thing British people get really excited about. Remember Tim Henman? He was actually pretty good in Virtua Tennis on Dreamcast; he was also the subject of yearly British exuberance, and ultimately disappointment, whenever Wimbledon rolled around.

Anyway, the point of Reilly’s little video is that Andy Murray is popular in England. Which is why it would make sense to score the piece with “God Save The Queen.” Except the producer didn’t do that. He or she, for whatever reason — and I admit it’s hard to notice at first — chose the German national anthem, “Das Deutschlandlied.” Minor mistake! Fortunately, England and Germany share no sense of ill will toward one another bred by any sort of recent historical conflict; heck, they don’t mind the occasional anthem swap! Hey, sure! Go for it!

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ESPN the Magazine is rolling out an, um, interesting concept: all-nude athletes in an upcoming issue!

Now, far be it from me to dog ESPN for this idea, but … really? Naked men and women in a sports magazine? I could have sworn that was reserved for more hip and cool magazines with a weekly circulation.

“We’re toying with the idea of making it a no-clothes issue,” [EIC Gary] Belsky says from his office in Manhattan. But first, he says, he and his staff will have to figure out how to “use equipment and pads and bats and goalposts and soccer nets and pucks and helmets to obscure body parts that we still can’t quite go to in a magazine that’s part of a company owned by (Disney).”

I mean, I guess this could end well — ESPN has cited several examples in which the company already used a significant lack of clothing in photos, and it’s different from what you immediately think when you conjure up any sort of visual pertaining  to “ESPN Magazine goes nude” (my brain’s still trying to function from my trip to Phish, so the words “ESPN” and “naked” led to “Boomer” and “Moobs” which then led to me being unable to eat lunch … just as a litmus test of sorts for how this should play out.)

Instead, it could be action shots of attractive (members of each sex, I would presume) athletes playing their sports naked while being positioned in a manner that doesn’t show any — ahem — junk. In other words, this probably won’t be nearly as risque or terrifying as it sounds. Besides, two even better points: first, we’ve all already seen Chris Cooley’s junk and secondly, can this really be worse than that Mt. Rushmore thing they did with Rick Reilly? Hells and no.

Lane Kiffin has already done the unimaginable. No, not the individually stupid stuff he’s managed to be embarrassed for since arriving in Knoxville, Tennessee; he’s actually somehow given Al Davis a modicum of credibility for getting rid of him. And that notion was only furthered during a recent “Outside the Lines” segment, where Bob Ley may have busted Kiffin for a(nother) secondary recruiting violation … on television.

Dave Link of GoVolsXtra has the street-word:

“Now, Kiffin’s arrival has brought several secondary NCAA violations,” Ley said. “It is entirely possible that you just saw another one. Remember the scene where Lane Kiffin is speaking with a recruit?

“Well, in the infamously thick NCAA rulebook, Rule 13.0.1, (it states) media members cannot observe recruiting contact by coaches. Tennessee tells Outside the Lines it is reviewing this matter. The NCAA is reserving comment until the story airs, so we look forward to hearing from them today (Sunday).”

So, to be more clear … ESPN approached Lane Kiffin about appearing in a segment on television. Kiffin, who obviously passed his recruiting test with flying colors, somehow manages, in the course of this segment being filmed, to speak with a recruit.

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Jon Gruden’s hiring at ESPN as the new Mr. Tony has everyone in the sports media world all a-twitter (both literally and metaphorically in some cases). It’s an awesome move for ESPN, because the much-maligned Kornheiser gets to move peacefully out of the way, and the World Wide Leader actually finds someone who should create a booth without a tremendously weak link for the first time in a while.

But here’s the thing — and, full disclosure, this is more of a collaborative brain trust effort between MDS, Ryan Wilson and I than it is my own: what if Gruden is just a placeholder for Matt Millen? Seriously, think about it.

Gruden has side-stepped questions about the length of his contract and his intended stay at ESPN, utilizing the excuse of being “short-term-focused” as a way of saying “kindly stop asking that question immediately, thank you,” even when speaking to his future broadcasting partner. (Props to Tirico for actually asking that, by the way.)

As the Times mentioned yesterday, all of Gruden’s speak, in fact, circulates around just being on the set of MNF for one year. But in the face of so many poor choices for America’s most popular football show, you would think that ESPN might consider some long-term planning.

Which is exactly where Millen comes in: As MDS pointed out last night, Matt Millen is a freaking fantastic announcer. He’s actually a really good guy too. He’s just considered a “boob” because of his incomparable blunders in the Lions’ front office. And there’s nothing wrong with thinking that, because it’s accurate.

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