It's no secret that 60% of all male homoerotic masturbatory fantasies involve articles from ESPN's Sports Guy, Bill Simmons. And while that might be a gross exaggeration, it's at least consistent with the rampant hyperbole of most Sports Guy articles. But his frequent criticism of sports announcers and certain ESPN anchors is usually on the mark. There are tons of poor commentators; my personal Hall of Shame includes Steven A. Smith, Skip Bayless, Bill Walton, and Jeanne Zelasko, with an honorable mention for the Boom Goes the Dynamite guy.

Who are the Worst of the Worst in Simmons's book? The editors at ESPN.com forbid him from saying. So today's article is about as close as we're likely to come to reading the Sports Guy's McCarthy List of Commie-tators. Simmons writes:

My bosses won't allow me to say which six announcers I would deport to Eastern Europe, but here are their initials jumbled together backwards: WBMABCMJMTBJ."

Jumbled together forwards, the initials read JBTMJMCBAMBW. Culling evidence from previous Sports Guy articles, Gelf has the likely list: Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, John Madden, Charles Barkley, Al Michaels, and Bill Walton.

The only questionable name (in Gelf's opinion) is Al Michaels, to whom Simmons has only given minimal tongue-lashings, except in a recent article lampooning the final ABC broadcast of Monday Night Football. Otherwise, in the words of Tony Kornheiser (and probably my favorite sports-journalist personality): "That's it. That's the list."