LOS ANGELES—Pop-culture enthusiast and sportswriter Bill Simmons, a regular columnist for ESPN's Page 2, was evidently suffering from genre confusion earlier this week when he picked Martin Scorsese's The Departed to win Super Bowl XLI. "The Departed just has a ton of upside that you can't ignore—it's got great chemistry, it keeps up the intensity all the way through, and it's got a hungry underdog coach who hasn't won the big one," Simmons wrote, adding that The Departed's only weakness may be that the film "lacks a clear cut offensive MVP to fill the role Brandon Walsh played for the great Dallas Cowboys dynasties." "This pick has nothing to do with my obvious hometown bias, but the city of Boston deserves to win the Oscar, especially after Mystic River's2004 collapse when it eventually succumbed to Billy Crystal's heartbreaking missed field goal." Simmons added that if The Departed doesn't win the Super Bowl, it will be eerily reminiscent of the time the expansion Florida Marlins "practically stole" the Best New Artist Grammy from the Colorado Rockies in 1993.