At the end of the episode, Jeremy tells his sister (in his letter) about how Dan cured his writer's block. "And in that moment, Dan was reminded once again why he wanted to write in the first place. It's for the same reason anybody does anything: to impress women." Josh Charles portrayed Knox Overstreet in Dead Poets Society (1989) where in one lesson, his teacher, Mr. Keating (played by Robin Williams ) posed the question, "Language was developed for one endeavor, and that is?". The student he first requested the answer from doesn't respond so he picks another who responds, "To Communicate?", and Mr. Keating responded, "No! To woo women."
As Sports Night is based on Sportscenter, the bulging disk script incident actually did almost happen to Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick as they told the story to David Letterman on his talk show.