Check out any message board that carries conversation about the Sports Guy, and you'll find more and more comments about how Simmons has lost it, how he's not as good as he used to be, how he's coasting on pat catchphrases, how he's — to use a cliche Simmons has appropriated to great effect — jumped the shark.

On one hand, there may be a green-eyed monster typing those comments. Certainly, any sportswriter, print or online, who figures any dope with a clicker can do what Simmons does harbors some resentment that one particular Sports Dope has parlayed a successful career out of what essentially is writing not all that different from e-mail between friends.

On the other hand, there are legitimate reasons for what in Jerry Maguire was called a Kushlash. To put it in Sports Guy-esque terms — meaning, something drawn from the 1980s pop culture that weaned Simmons as he grew up in Boston — Simmons is U2, and he has reached the Rattle and Hum stage of his career.

Like U2, Simmons had a slow but eventually meteoric rise that built an enormous base of fans who felt personally and emotionally connected to his work. Like the Rattle and Hum album and movie, Simmons' work — partly because of himself, and partly through no fault of his own — has given some of those fans, and his detractors, reason to think that the Sports Guy has overreached and has become particularly full of himself.

There are three distinct similarities.

Bono, we've seen you crouch one too many times

When your work becomes ubiquitous, eventually people tire of you, no matter what you do. Comedians had long parodied Bono's Jesus Christ-pose stage movements before Rattle and Hum splashed Bono's overly earnest Bono-ness on the movie screens of America. Anyone who's read Simmons for more than six months knows his catchphrases ("I'm throwing up in my mouth," "Good times," "When I run ESPN6...," "Ewing Theory," "The Leap," etc.) and knows when they're coming.

Like in architecture, there's a period in humor writing when the work is not new enough to be surprising, but not classic enough to be inspiring. Simmons may have hit that point. Unfortunately, this is where Simmons' relative lack of reporting — beyond describing sojourns to Las Vegas or being decamped to some big-time event to spin the scene — may hurt him. For most columnists, a dry spell can be broken by going to some games. Maybe his decision to buy season tickets to the pathetic Los Angeles Clippers, and to report what he sees there, could be the Achtung Baby that could break him out any perceived rut.

Guys, your roots are nowhere near the Sun Records studio

For some fans, Simmons' Fonzie-like ride over the shark came a few years back, when he left Boston for Los Angeles to write for "Jimmy Kimmel Live." He kept up the sports columning during that time, so abandoning what made him famous wasn't the issue. For some fans, it's unforgivable that the Boston Sports Guy became the Los Angeles Sports Guy. Especially when, after leaving Kimmel's show for an even more prominent presence at ESPN.com, he didn't return to Boston. In one column, an angry Simmons even had to defend why he went out to Starbucks during one of his beloved Red Sox's playoff games.

In Rattle and Hum, U2 visited Elvis' old Sun Studio in a failed attempt to reconnect with musical roots it never had. For some of Simmons' fans, his staying in L.A. is like U2 deciding to permanently decamp to Memphis. It just doesn't feel right.

When did you think the black gospel choir was a good idea?

Some of the biggest flops on Rattle and Hum came when U2 decided to reinvent its songs. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" with a black gospel choir? Rather than lift the song, it deadened it. Simmons' version of this misbegotten idea is the Sports Guy cartoon.

Definitely, ESPN.com and Simmons are trying to stretch the Sports Guy persona in as many ways as possible, given its popularity. But the Nov. 24 premiere of the Sports Guy cartoon may have been one stretch too many. Basically, the cartoons, if the first is any indication, are a rehashing of the entertaining columns Simmons has written, except that they've been drawn up to be boring and unfunny. It could be worse. Maybe the cartoon Simmons, like Batman and the Harlem Globetrotters, will be called upon to solve mysteries with Scooby Doo. ("Mr. Steinbrenner!" "Yeah, I would have signed Pedro Martinez, too, if hadn't been for you punk kids — and that Sports Guy!")

Despite any backlash, it's not as if Simmons is any danger of losing his plum gig. But if he's run into the ground, if his next move is Pop instead of Achtung Baby, it won't negate the impact Simmons already has had. In fact, to prove that impact, there will only be a million or so would-be Sports Guys ready to line up for his job if necessary.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.