As an avid Howard Stern listener, I'm always amused when Baba Booey bursts in the room and announces how their last guest shot to #1 on Google Trends, which then leads to Howard showering himself in self-congratulations, as he's been known to do.
Fast-forward to Friday afternoon, when I'm reading the latest Bill Simmons offering in which he releases his first NFL Power Rankings of the season. We come to #9, Green Bay, and in it he makes a pop culture reference that I'm guessing most of his readers knows very little about yet will probably find some level of interest in. See if you can spot it:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUpmUsvvObwUi2QCzjSnl2p-orkOFwUkJCY-VHc2H-1bGeW6mTjw2NzAXuJOPpPFX736ZWd7-Uh3LYWWSclenHJN0mdHYuG9q8hKm85_6wm9OfK7n0LABluvkAn1pmfuIJRg/s400/simmons1.jpg)
So I gave Mr. Simmons the Stern Test. Just how much does a vague Bill Simmons reference to a largely unknown actress drive web searches? To Google Trends!
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4_fzCCC7LNl7ZmJhk9-I0zfgEfpzpkLrniXj7rSRW5i7yFL1cQFnim2cq_gFZnR6kf8YVnnUfREdJ8nQl8YJ9yS0UVbTHEeXFHJdE-336C797vG2eAZzP-W5ij2wQ0bAplw/s400/simmons002.jpg)
As you can see, the Simmons Fan Club packs a considerable wallop, enough to the point where "redhead from mad men" is the 34th most-searched internet term of the day. It's not quite as popular as Tim Kawakami, victim of Raider hatred (also mentioned in the same Simmons column at #27), but ahead of Presidential debate moderator Jim Lehrer.
So in short, Bill Simmons' words are almost as powerful as Howard Stern's. That's a sentence I never thought I'd write in a lifetime.
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