Editor's Note: This column appears in the Jan. 20 edition of ESPN The Magazine.

This is my final column. Put a fork in me. I'm walking away at the top of my game. I need to pursue other challenges. I want to spend more time with my family. I just don't have the same zest for writing anymore. There's nothing left to prove. Of course, I'm coming back.

	Jerry Jones and Bill Parcells will be lucky to outlast J-Lo and Ben.

Let's face it: Nobody stays retired anymore. In just the past few weeks, we've learned Bill Parcells is going to coach the Cowboys and Sylvester Stallone has signed on for Rocky VI. Rocky VI?!? Can they release a Rocky VI even after we've all agreed to agree Rocky V never happened? And Parcells ... how could he? His last book was The Final Season: My Last Year as a Head Coach in the NFL, for God's sake. Can't these people just stay away?

In the old days, only boxers had trouble sticking to retirements, and only because they were so addled, they could never remember why they were home. Now everyone feels the pull to return. MJ has announced three different retirements, counting the one in November. And even though watching his latest comeback has made us more uncomfortable than Kathy Bates' nude scene in About Schmidt, you know what? I don't believe him. He'll be back again. Apparently, the greatest player ever enjoys racking up those two-point games, running pick-and-collides with Kwame and being abused so badly by T-Mac that the young star practically felt compelled to apologize afterward. Good times!

As for Parcells, he's back to butt heads with Jerry Jones and collect material for The Latest Final Season. The worst part of his comeback is that it has inspired the "Who'll last longer, Bill and Jerry, or Ben and J.Lo?" bit, which has been beaten deeper into the ground than any joke since "Why don't they just make the whole airplane out of the black box?" The Tuna is going to be fine -- the Cowboys will make the playoffs in two years. It's the next comeback I dread, the one in 2008, when he decides to coach the Cards or Bengals or Lions, and goes down in flames. You know it's coming.

Rocky Balboa, on the other hand, is already pushing it. He goes the distance with Creed, shrugs off doctor's advice, endangers his eye, wins the rematch. Now he's the champ. The eye heals miraculously, he rips through a parade of meatballs and bums, makes a ton of cash, holds his own with Thunderlips, steps away. But no! Clubber Lang insults Adrian, lures Rocky back into the ring, knocks him out and inadvertently kills Mickey.

Rocky doubts himself, then regains the eye of the tiger and beats Clubber in the rematch. He walks away again. Enough, right? Not after that commie bastard Ivan Drago kills Apollo. Rocky has to come back-again-to avenge his friend's death in Russia, on Christmas, for free. (C'mon, it could happen.) Rocky absorbs roughly 25,000 overhand rights before chopping down Drago in the 15th, winning over the hostile crowd while he's at it. Just for kicks, he lectures on the perils of the Cold War, urging us all to band together with the immortal words: "If I can change, and you can change ... everyone can change!" Is it a coincidence the Berlin Wall fell just a few years later? I think not!

	Know when to walk away, know when to run ...

To recap. Rocky's comebacks: four. Challengers defeated: all of them. Cold Wars ended: one. Now that's got to be enough, right? Of course not. He's back again for Rocky V (which never happened, okay?) and once more for Rocky VI, even though Stallone has aged so dreadfully he looked like he was wearing a mask of himself in Driven. What could possibly be the premise of Rocky VI? Rocky fights his plastic surgeon after a facelift goes horribly wrong? Rocky fights someone who keeps taunting him at a weekly bingo game? Can't we please band together to stop the madness? Is there nothing we can do?

I'd start the crusade myself, but as I mentioned earlier, I'm retiring from sportswriting. That's it. I'm done. Thanks to everyone at Page 2 and The Magazine, thanks to my family and thanks to you, the readers. It's been a fun ride.

I'll see you next weeks.

Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine, and he's a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, premiering Super Bowl Sunday on ABC.