Bill Simmons is the most important … well, journalist isn’t quite the right word, because he is a fan first, second and third …

Bill Simmons is the most important writer on sports topics (yes, that’s it) in America today.

I can’t tell you how many hits he generates for espn.com … but I am convinced he is more widely read on a weekly basis than any sports-oriented writer. Ever. I couldn’t even tell you who would be second, right now. Maybe Rick Reilly, because he also gets good play on espn.com’s home page and has that Sports Illustrated background? Maybe Mitch Albom, ostensibly still a columnist in Detroit — but far better known for his novels?

Whoever is second, to Simmons, it’s not a newspaper guy in the old-fashioned sense. The print-first guys really don’t matter much outside their home bases, anymore, and that is, I believe, a big factor in why Simmons so often is criticized in press boxes around the country.

He is close to a household name in a way maybe no newspaper sports guy ever has been. Red Smith wasn’t. Not Dick Young. Not Ring Lardner. Not Grantland Rice, not Jim Murray, not Albom … not anyone who ever got paid by a newspaper. And he has the long and fawning wikipedia entry to prove it.  (See what kind of wiki treatment you find on some of those other guys. Not much.)

So, I can only guess that the U.S. Soccer Federation is quite pleased to have discovered that, yes, Bill Simmons … has discovered their team. OK, he was almost 40 years old when he tumbled to it, but better late than never for soccer — a sport that has never quite entered the top tier of American sports … and now has the most-read sports guy in America fawning over one of their matches.

But Simmons’ discovery of the game with the spotted ball … was not his best moment as a writer on sports topics. Not even.

I like Simmons’ stuff. A lot. I believe he is the most compelling read in modern sports journalism. I never miss him.

He is almost the authoritarian voice on the NBA and NFL, and he pays lots of attention to baseball, as well.

He is well-versed in sports gambling, which endears him to that crowd, as well. And he knows everything worth knowing about Boston sports.

He has great insights into pop culture and introduces them freely and lavishly in his writing on sports topics. He can be sidetracked for paragraphs on end by the latest hot show on cable TV.

And he writes … forever. He writes until he is done. Which is what being on the Web is all about. There are no space limitations in cyberspace, and Simmons was one of the first to understand that and clutch it to his bosom and use it as a wedge into the reading habits of American sports fans.

(A side note: Simmons allegedly has a feud with Reilly, and that tells you more about Simmons’ celebrity, that sports journalists have heard they have a feud, because nobody knows or cares if Mitch Albom hates Mike Lupica, etc. … but back to the side note. Simmons also does podcasts now, and he had Reilly on a podcast back on April 7. Click this link to the espn.com archive and call up the April 7 podcast, if you want to hear it. Anyway, Reilly and Simmons were civil, but the conversation was quite fascinating when it got around to how they go about writing. Reilly is a firm believer in the concept of “800 words” … which is very very traditional. Very old school. And Simmons had trouble explaining to him — and he tried; it was Reilly who just didn’t seem to be able to get his mind around the concept — that writing long, on the Web, isn’t bad, because modern readers skip over stuff they don’t like, and if they like you … they’ll stay online with you forever. Really. Which has value, in cyberspace. I believe it’s called “stickiness.” Anyway, it’s a fascinating conversation if you’re at all interested in the sports writing biz.)

Anyway, back to soccer. As Simmons’ wikipedia entry notes, he has dabbled with the concept of embracing soccer, and as a guy who would have you believe he is cutting edge on all things pertaining to American culture he should. But he was the guy who was old-school about a topic, basically ignoring the world’s game and not doing anything to change that until last week — when he went to the U.S.-vs.-Mexico match in Mexico City … and apparently was blown away by the atmosphere.

Well, yes, we all get to have our first time at something, and get all giddy about it, and feel as if we just discovered some great truth that nobody else has grasped … but soccer is at least 20 years old, as a legit sport, in the United States, going back to the 1989 Shot Heard Round the World that put the U.S. in the World Cup for the first time in 40 years.

The U.S. has played scads of big matches since then. Even a few old-fashioned, ink-stained wretches know this.

And in this entry about his going to the match in Mexico … Simmons’ exuberance is fun and appealing, but it also exposed is his lack of familiarity with a game that is all-too-familiar in 95 percent of the countries in the world.

He also is more than a little sloppy about his reporting. To suggest that American fans risk physical harm while attending a World Cup qualifier in Mexico City is wrong. I have seen four matches in Azteca Stadium, and the crowds are enormous and a bit rowdy and heavily policed. But I have never, ever seen an American fan attacked or injured by Mexico fans. I have snaked past hundreds, thousands of fans while trying to get into the stadium and never felt threatened.

Simmons may like to talk about bullet-proof vehicles, and I don’t doubt they have them in Mexico City, but it’s probably a lot more about narco lords than overwrought soccer fans. He may find it makes for a more colorful read to suggest that turning right instead of left while leaving his hotel could mean some personal disaster, but I and millions of Americans have walked all around Mexico City (before and after soccer matches) with no trouble — aside from breathing the thin and dirty air.

Also, the manner of his going to the game was … interesting.  He was not a credentialed reporter, it seems clear. No interviews with players. Nothing from the coach.

He apparently was sitting in a box reserved for ESPN and U.S. federation honchos. Where he hung with movers and shakers but was removed from what is, yes, a more genuine reporting experience in Azteca’s primitive press box, not to mention its medieval locker rooms.

Which seems only to emphasize that Simmons is Not Really a Journalist.

And doesn’t want to be.

He doesn’t want to be burdened by fairness, or by approaching a topic as an unbiased observer. Even though he apparently has a Masters in journalism from Boston University and reportedly worked for three years as a sports writer (1992-95 or thereabouts) for the Boston Herald. (It’s on the wiki page.)

Simmons actually represents something new and trendsetting in American sports writing — a guy who came up from the Web side, as a biased observer, essentially a fan (without apologies) who is good enough and got into the dot-com thing just at the right time to become a significant celebrity.

Is that good or bad? No. It just is.

Those of us who spent a decade or three in print … some of us can be bitter about Bill Simmons. Some of us may grow sick and bloody tired of his relentless honking for Boston and use of the word “we” when referring to Boston teams …

But the man has talent. He is as inventive, as clever, as prolific as anyone working today. What Bill James was to baseball statistical analysis — a guy who created a niche and then filled it — Bill Simmons is to Web Sports Fanboys. If he didn’t create the genre, he was one of its pioneers and is by far its most successful practitioner.

But when it comes to international soccer … Bill Simmons should feel free to have a chat with the print survivors down there in the press box.

They might help him jump past some of the “first-timer” things that writers of his own generation experienced more than a decade ago … and aid him in avoiding the pitfall cliches about “what it seems like it is to me from my private box” vs. “what it actually is all about.”