His dad is real, he shows pictures of him in his columns, now about that Sports Gal...
My thing is that Simmons uses his dad as figure in his columns to show the pulse, often reactionary, of a given sports team fan base. Generalizations, yes, but they’re usually during a game or right after it that exhibit pure emotion. JS, who I don’t hate either, is a columnist that has days, weeks to craft his columns.