Simmons... out!

[PaperClip529]

I wonder what is next for the Sports Guy and Grantland.

Report: Bill Simmons Is Leaving ESPN

Updated with the story from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/s...are-parting-ways.html?smid==tw-nytsports&_r=0

 

[clintrichardson]

I wonder what is next for the Sports Guy and Grantland.

Report: Bill Simmons Is Leaving ESPN

the Grantland question is at least as interesting as the Simmons angle. lot of talented people at the site. they certainly could sustain without simmons, but i wonder if they would have to hire/elevate someone to be its star.

 

[JackReacher]

I'll be interested to see who from Grantland follows Simmons wherever he goes.

 

[CD Boogie]

Doesn't sound like it was his decision given Skipper's statement, but it's just as well. After that three-week suspension for bashing Goodell, it's hard to see how he could have remained there. I know he has a rabid following that will remain loyal, but it's the fringe fans who will lose touch with him now that he's off the biggest platform available. As someone who hates the NBA, I grew increasingly disenchanted with his stuff, though I enjoyed his Red Sox, Pats and NFL takes.

 

[TyWebb]

Even given all the saltiness between Simmons and Skipper, this still surprises me.

 

[Riptide]

I wonder if his balls are deflated now.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

They should hire Jay Mariotti to run Grantland.

 

[JackReacher]

Nothing yet on ESPN.com.

Weird.

 

[CD Boogie]

Front Row has a statement. ESPN Front Row - Telling the ESPN Story from the Inside Out

First time I've been back to ESPN.com since they relaunched as a scrolling **** show.

 

[swingline]

Meh.

I read Grantland for the TV/movie pieces, Charles Pierce and whatever catches my eye, which usually isn't much.

I tried to read Simmons' novel on Tim Duncan the other day, but, like all of Simmons' writing, it gets bogged down in extraneous **** that it makes my eyes glaze over. That's the first Simmons story that I've even bothered to click on in years and years because Bill still doesn't understand that having unlimited bandwidth doesn't mean you have to use it in every story.

I won't mourn his leaving much the same way that ESPN seems happy to be rid of him.

 

[DanielSimpsonDay]

Of all the writers on Grantland, he's the author I read the least. At this point - for both good and bad - you know what you're getting with his stuff. Readers already know how he feels about the chosen subject matter and his presentation of those feelings is rather staid. You may be predictably entertained or enraged, but rarely enlightened.

 

[JackReacher]

Simmons doesn't write all that much anymore, does he? He'll participate in those morning-after e-mail blurbs with a few other Grantland staffers. But generally speaking, I didn't think he wrote as many columns as he used to.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Meh.

That's the first Simmons story that I've even bothered to click on in years and years because Bill still doesn't understand that having unlimited bandwidth doesn't mean you have to use it in every story.

Very well-stated. It's become a problem not only for Simmons, but for a lot of writers who are online entities.

 

[Alma]

The end of an era. Simmons finally made himself enough of a pain in the ass to not be worth the money.

Bill Simmons was, in many ways, as good of a fit for ESPN as anybody not named Chris Berman. This is true. White, college-educated, upper middle class dude with thoroughly middlebrow tastes and an affinity for 80s TV and 90s NBA, like many of the rest of the white, college-educated upper middle class sports dudes. The 30 for 30 docs, often dubious artistically, were perfect in that regard. Safe nostalgia. Money makers. If nothing else, the Dr. V story proved Simmons is precisely that middlebrow guy, pointing out the "oddities" of the world. Nobody involved with that story stopped very long to think about the mental state/personhood of the subject.

Even though it found itself in the NBA commentary - which is itself is far too narrow a niche - Grantland has long been, in my mind, a costly vanity project, a way for Simmons to buy some cool, millennial talent he doesn't have in himself or the time to explore. The idea that ESPN had to throw more time and money into it...it's unwieldy as it is. It's restless and unfocused. It's a grocery store of twee.

Simmons' transformation from wise-ass to cool journo impresario at ESPN had to have a terminus somewhere. He was no longer content to be good at what he was good at doing, and ESPN, at long last, was tired of giving him more money to find such contentment.

It should go without saying someone will give him a billion dollars to run his own sports site.

 

[Stoney]

As someone who hates the NBA, I grew increasingly disenchanted with his stuff, though I enjoyed his Red Sox, Pats and NFL takes.

This is the Bizzaro World Simmons take--essentially the polar opposite of what I usually hear--which is that his NBA stuff is outstanding, his NFL stuff not nearly as good, and his Pat/Sox stuff downright insufferable.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

IF TBL is to be believed, ESPN couldn't justify Simmons' $6 million a year asking price for the amount of revenue he drives. Especially with contract negotiations coming up for First Take and Mike and Mike, which are both hot garbage, but HUGE money makers for ESPN.

 

[JackReacher]

Ugh. How much do those four guys pull in?

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

Dunno, but Skipper told folks if ESPN was paying Simmons' $6 million a year, what would he have to pay those money-making ass clowns?

 

[CD Boogie]

Well, the Celtics sucked when he started at ESPN, and he made his bones there by calling Roger Clemens the antichrist, pushing the Sox/Yankees rivalry, and sitting front row as the Pats won their first Super Bowl. The timing was perfect. His NBA stuff might be great, I can't say, because I hate the NBA and stopped watching it once the one-and-done generation killed college basketball IMHO. He recognized his niche was gonna be the NBA, so hat's off to him, but a vast majority of his columns were NBA-centric, and I couldn't care less about it.

 

[clintrichardson]

Simmons' NBA attachment makes me wonder if he could actually end up at Bleacher Report, which is owned by Turner/TNT. Have to think that aligning with an NBA rights holder makes the most sense for both sides.