As if manna from heaven, news spread tonight that the biggest boil on the ass of Chicago sports has had himself lanced.

For more than a decade I’ve longed to write these words.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut, to resign.

It should come as no shock, given that the paper he works for is about two months away from a toe tag.  At the time he signed his new three year contract extension (believed to be worth an absurd $6 million) in June, we joked that it was like Steve Young’s $40 million deal with the LA Express.  Jay had better have gotten the money up front.

He didn’t, but in the end, he left it all behind anyway.  Who knows the real reason?  It can’t really be that he sees the Internet as his future.

Can it?

In the Tribune (or rather, ironically, on the Tribune Web site) Jim Kirk quotes Mariotti as saying that journalism “entirely a Web site business. There were not many newspapers[in China covering the Olympics].”

That’s so ironic for so many reasons.  He just now is getting the idea that the Interwebs might be a big thing?  He probably is, given that he stopped leaving his house to write about sports about five years ago.  I’m surprised he actually was in China.  I figured his Olympic reports were done Jason Blair style and that he was covering the Michael Phelps races from a booth in the back of the Manhole.

Kirk reports that Mariotti is talking with “a lot of Web sites.”  And that when he e-mailed in his resignation to Sun Times editor  Michael Cooke that Cooke replied, “You kidding?”

Then, I’m sure he pulled a hamstring jumping for fucking joy to be rid of the prima donna dipshit.

Mariotti’s take on what’s happening to newspapers is pretty insightful, actually.

“I’m a competitor and I get the sense this marketplace doesn’t compete,” he said. “Everyone is hanging on for dear life at both papers. I think probably the days of high stakes competition in Chicago are over.

“To see what’s happened in this business…I don’t want to go down with it.”

But come on, what Web site is he going to work for (ESPN.com), I mean what rag would hire this asshat (ESPN.com)?  Anybody have a clue (ESPN.com)?

Right now the Website in the lead for his services is a natural fit for a man of his ilk.

Well, Jay’s gone.  Time to get Downey to finally check into that old age home.

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