Simmons is free.

October 15, 2014 6:33 AM

Bill Simmons returns to ESPN today after a three-week suspension for calling Roger Goodell a liar. There's a lot of speculation over his next move.
posted by xowie (43 comments total)

Disclaimer: I have no dog in this fight; I'm not a sports fan and don't follow sports.

But as a human being and a woman, I would love it if he stayed put at ESPN. His audience there is going to be much bigger than it would be if he formed his own independent thing, and if he's continuing to call bullshit on the powers that be during these kinds of scandals, I want the largest number of people possible to hear him call bullshit.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:40 AM on October 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

"Free" ?

It's not like he was in jail or being held hostage...
posted by HuronBob at 6:41 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Free to do his job again.
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:46 AM on October 15, 2014

It's really weird to see the guy I started reading as The Boston Sports Guy back in the early 2000's is now being talked about in the NYT and Forbes.

EmpressCallipygos: "if he's continuing to call bullshit on the powers that be during these kinds of scandals, I want the largest number of people possible to hear him call bullshit."

The problem with that is at ESPN, he is specifically forbidden from calling bullshit on ESPN, (or any other Disney property) which is a huge blind spot to have in the sports world.

I think moving to a reasonably large but independent site that will build a vertical around him is his best bet. SB Nation seems the obvious choice, but I like Deadspin's moxie in their attempted recruiting.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:46 AM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

It's not like he was in jail or being held hostage...

He was a political prisoner. He kicked a giant mouse in the butt.
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:49 AM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

I rely on the Simmons podcasts to fill a majority of my podcast listening time on my commute into work (someone is bound to pipe in here and say how his columns aren't worth reading any more, and they aren't, but his podcast is largely superb), so I was particularly grumpy about his really stupid suspension by a really really stupid network. That said, Grantland is a pretty cool thing that Mr. Simmons continues to get to run, and I'd say the chances of him leaving ESPN, who in turn need Simmons to have any sports journalism credibility at all (they will don't deny this need either), at near nil.

The biggest chance Simmons had to leave ESPN was right before signing on to build Grantland. Now, not so much. Besides, if he left he wouldn't get to take all his buddies with him.
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:51 AM on October 15, 2014

Also, he didn't say it perfectly, but Roger Goodell is a fucking liar.
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:52 AM on October 15, 2014 [12 favorites]

he is specifically forbidden from calling bullshit on ESPN, (or any other Disney property)

I should add that the reason why this suspension is so troubling, is that it seems to be extending that protection (which Simmons has grudgingly accepted from the beginning -- he often jokes about getting the business end of a cattle prod when he edges close to the line of criticising an ESPN colleague/property) to ESPN/Disney and their associated business partners, which encompasses most of the sports and entertainment world. This means he would be unable to continue his style of brutally honest commentating and have to be more of a "company man" spouting the typical talking head crap.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:58 AM on October 15, 2014

It's really weird to see the guy I started reading as The Boston Sports Guy back in the early 2000's is now being talked about in the NYT and Forbes.

He's the reason ESPN has any online presence, especially with the strong writing and web design at SI. Content is still king. His Grantland site is a huge drive for their traffic - but if they pull that bullshit on him again, he should go fivethirtyeight.com on their ass. It's not like he's Olberman - he had a career before ESPN, and he will have an equally huge career after ESPN, and he will take his vast fanbase with him. He doesn't even need to go indie like Silverman did. The LA Times or Yahoo! or even SI(now that would be a coup) would let him do what he liked how he liked to do it with his own imprint, and Grantland would wither and die and be folded back into ESPN's "Extra Mustard" or whatever useless corporate mush they're trying to push today without his presence and politicking.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:59 AM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm trying to picture the "you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!" speech in Donald Duck's voice.
posted by delfin at 7:12 AM on October 15, 2014 [16 favorites]

Free, as in #FreeBillSimmons.
posted by xowie at 7:19 AM on October 15, 2014

I don't think a Bill Simmons / ESPN thread should go by without pointing this out: Simmons' suspension was three times longer than that of Stephen A. Smith, who said that women sometimes provoke their abusers.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:28 AM on October 15, 2014 [44 favorites]

His Grantland site is a huge drive for their traffic - but if they pull that bullshit on him again, he should go fivethirtyeight.com on their ass.

Strange example: With 538, Nate Silver started independent, then with New York Times, and now with... ESPN.

Clearly Simmons needs to talk to (surprisingly) Keith Olbermann about how not to get suspended. Calling someone a liar must be a no-no, but KO consistently calls for the firing of Goodell and half of the executive office of the NFL due to their incompetence or deceit. I guess that's better. KO never disparages ESPN either.
posted by ALongDecember at 7:31 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Grantland is a huge driver of their traffic.

Not according to the Times this morning -- they say it gets about 5 million hits to ESPN.com's 80 million. Frankly, I bet a lot of 'em don't overlap; I certainly never go to ESPN.com, though I read a lot of grantland stuff. Frankly, sports fans who prefer text to pictures and video are always going to be a small niche; ESPN could lose Simmons and not blink. It would hurt their brand with us poindexters, and maybe get them a frowny op ed or two, but I suspect the bottom line impact would be scanty. Especially if they kept hold of Grantland, which I'm presuming they have the right to do --- they have a stable of talented young writers, and depending on who they got for an editor it might even do okay. I think Simmons still needs them if he wants to keep on living the dream the way he is now --- it might be possible for him to make it as a independent, but it's a much, much tougher gig. Sports reporting requires a lot more resources than something like Beck or Stern --- for them, as long as they can keep the mics on in the studio, that's 90% of the brand and 80% of the content. You need to send someone to the games sometimes to write about them...
posted by Diablevert at 7:40 AM on October 15, 2014

He was a political prisoner. He kicked a giant mouse in the butt.

He would have been suspended for a far shorter time (or not at all) if he'd kicked Disney in the butt. He kicked ESPN in the butt, and as pretty much everyone who's worked with ESPN know, ESPN is completely and utterly intolerant of that.

Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, is famously hands off if you don't screw up. The ESPN brand is valuable, and it is *not* conflated with Disney. Even the two ESPN properties at Walt Disney World are very clearly ESPN and very clearly not Disney. I seriously doubt this matter even got near the Disney Exec. Hell, I doubt it reached the top ESPN execs.

This suspension didn't come from Anaheim. This suspension came from Bristol, CT -- and I listened to that podcast when it came out. Simmons quite literally dared ESPN to suspend him. My very first thought was "If you're lucky, you'll be suspended. Bigger names than you have taunted Bristol and lost."

I'm glad he's back, but he, of all people, knows that you taunt Bristol at your own peril. This wasn't his first suspension.
posted by eriko at 7:43 AM on October 15, 2014

His Grantland site is a huge drive for their traffic - but if they pull that bullshit on him again, he should go fivethirtyeight.com on their ass.

Quite the opposite: Grantland does fine, but a lot of that traffic comes from being constantly linked off of the espn.com front page, which is a behemoth in its own right. It's unclear whether that site is a destination in its own right.

fivethirtyeight.com has done poorly at ESPN even with that front page presence.

Neither site is more than a drop in the bucket in ESPN revenue. And I've noticed Grantland starting to position themselves for a no-Simmons future: Barnwell referred to the Friday NFL column that he's taken over as "my" Friday picks column, and Zach Lowe is doing a lot of the NBA preview stuff with Jalen Rose. And you know what? Barnwell's column is way better than Simmons column has been, and Lowe is better on the NBA than Simmons is. I've read ever word Bill Simmons has ever wrote for ESPN and listened to every Bill Simmons podcast, but I'm not sure that 2014 Bill Simmons is such a valuable property without the ESPN apparatus. He ought to get in line and I think he will.
posted by Kwine at 7:46 AM on October 15, 2014

I hope he's got lawyers somewhere workinbg a way out of his contract for him. He can write his own check by now, almost anywhere related to sports would be damn lucky to have him, and most of those places would probably get a kick out of publicly embarrassing ESPN/Disney in the process.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:46 AM on October 15, 2014

I see that "Bill and Jalen's 2014 NBA Preview" is now the top story on Grantland. I think they had recorded most of that content before the suspension, so maybe that doesn't mean too much.
posted by Kwine at 7:48 AM on October 15, 2014

His next move is clearly to report the in progress trouser fire.
posted by srboisvert at 7:51 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Simmons best opportunity outside of ESPN is to find a web home with a large presence (something like Yahoo or NYT) that can work alongside a strong production/studio company.

I would love to see him land at TNT. An analysis team of him, Barkley, Smith and EJ would be awesome (Shaq can go suck an egg). If he could simultaneously get his own vertical with SI, Yahoo Sports or NYT (who I'm sure would love to get some payback for losing 538 to ESPN). He'd have just as big an audience as he does now and could almost certainly get them to give him absolutely free reign. (SI and NYT would do it just to stick a thumb in ESPN's eye.)

His friends could just come over when their contracts are up (if they want to).
posted by oddman at 8:04 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

If Simmons were to leave ESPN, he could move to another media conglomerate, such as Fox...

As in-the-pocket-of-the-NFL as ESPN is, FOX Sports is in even deeper. I can't see the league being too happy were FOX to hire Simmons.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:40 AM on October 15, 2014

You've gotta love Iger's "It's not insubordination, it's what he said," response. Like, what's that, Iger? You suspended him for three weeks over the F-word, did you? No? Then, yeah, the only reason to suspend him for 'what he said," is that it was insubordinate. And you're as much a fucking liar as Goodell is.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:44 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I thought the issue was that he said "Goodell is a liar" without any thing to back that up. Would it be different if he said, "Goodell is a liar. He said he saw the video, then that he didn't." That's the kind of thing ESPN is being vague about.
posted by thecjm at 8:57 AM on October 15, 2014

If Simmons wants to be at liberty to criticize the major sports leagues in any way he feels like, he'll hae to get a gig with a company that has no events broadcasts contracts with those leagues. Which rules out all the major broadcasters, and possibly also Yahoo! (real-time tickers) and other major web companies.
posted by ardgedee at 9:20 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I thought the issue was that he said "Goodell is a liar" without any thing to back that up. Would it be different if he said, "Goodell is a liar. He said he saw the video, then that he didn't."

I believe ESPN's claim is that he shouldn't have called Goodell a liar without something to back it up. Where it gets fuzzy is that while that's clearly the appropriate standard for a reported piece, as a matter of opinion, Simmons can say "I think Goodell's a liar" and it's fine, legally. Simmons is a columnist/blogger/podcaster/media personality; I'm no lawyer, but my guess is he'd be fine if the NFL had tried to make a case out of it. ESPN is saying their internal standard is, "we don't make serious accusations without facts to substantiate them".....I dunno, I dunno how much they let their hosts run their mouths in general.
posted by Diablevert at 9:21 AM on October 15, 2014

Grantland needs to sell little Dave Jacoby dolls that say "Don't get fired." Simmons should probably keep one in the studio with him.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 9:58 AM on October 15, 2014

Simmons can say "I think Goodell's a liar" and it's fine, legally.

And he didn't. He said, and I quote, "I’m just saying it. He is lying." Here's the whole section.

I just think not enough is being made out of the fact that they knew about the tape, and they knew what was on it. Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. I’m just saying it. He is lying. I think that dude is lying, if you put him up on a lie detector test that guy would fail. And for all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such fucking bullshit. It really is—it’s such fucking bullshit. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted.

Later, he says…

I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell. Because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone. The commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast. Thank you. … Please call me and say I’m in trouble. I dare you."

The problem, of course, is that podcast is published as part of Grantland, an ESPN property. When you're speaking on Grantland and you're paid by Grantland, you're speaking as ESPN, and ESPN did not accept Simmons calling Goddell a liar without actual proof that he was lying, and at least twice, he does just that.

Daring Bristol to not suspend you? ESPN is *legendary* about you toeing the company line. Yes, this is chickenshit, but this is legendary ESPN chickenshit. Thou Does Not Mock Bristol. ESPN has been consistent in this since the earliest days of the network. Yes, it's still chickenshit, but it is consistent chickenshit. When Simmons taunted them, he knew that he wasn't going to walk away unscathed.

Simmons is a columnist/blogger/podcaster/media personality; I'm no lawyer, but my guess is he'd be fine if the NFL had tried to make a case out of it.

Simmons, in fact, is the editor-in-chief of Grantland. It would normally be his job to suspend a reporter for crossing the line. He's not just a columnist/reporter/blogger. Everything that goes out on Grantland does so with his approval, and that includes the B.S. Report Podcast. He caught a lot of flack for the publication of "Dr. V's Magical Putter" because he ultimately approved the piece, and he was very clear that it was his fault that it was, in the end, published. He made the call, as an Editor-in-Chief should do, and he made the wrong call, and to his credit, he doesn't duck his responsibility at all. He knows he's the Editor-in-Chief, and that ultimately, every word written or uttered under the Grantland aegis is ultimately his responsibility.

The problem with being The Person In Charge is that, in that realm, you never ever stop being in charge. That, I feel, was why EPSN dropped three weeks on him. He was supposed to be the guy making sure that wild accusations were supported, not making them. If it had been Bill Barnwell, it probably would have been a talking to or a couple of days off. Instead, it was the Editor in Chief of the entire site. When the guy who's supposed to be making sure the rules are followed breaks them, it's a big deal.

There's a big difference between a private shooting off their mouth and a four star general shooting off their mouth. The former gets KP or other extra duty. The latter gets fired.

I still think that there's a real problem that he got 3 weeks and Stephen A. Smith only was suspended for one. But I don't think the problem is Simmons getting three weeks. The problem is Smith only getting one. Smith should have gotten somewhere between 4-∞ weeks.
posted by eriko at 10:02 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I realize you can't make a straight comparison, but I still think it's sad/hilarious that Ray Rice's initial punishment was only 2 weeks, compared to the three Simmons got.
posted by drezdn at 10:32 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

eriko: "ESPN is *legendary* about you toeing the company line. Yes, this is chickenshit, but this is legendary ESPN chickenshit. Thou Does Not Mock Bristol. ESPN has been consistent in this since the earliest days of the network. Yes, it's still chickenshit, but it is consistent chickenshit."

The thing is he wasn't "mocking" Bristol, he was criticising the NFL. Extending that legendary protection to the network's affiliated business partners is not consistent and is quite chilling.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:51 AM on October 15, 2014

You don't literally have to preface the statement with "I think that" or "in my opinion" for it to count as opinion in a libel case; the whole context is taken into consideration. Each and every BS report is also prefaced with the warning that the podcast is "a free-flowing conversation that occasionally touches on mature subjects;" ESPN goes to some lengths to make sure the listeners are aware that this is a commentary, not a reported piece, and that neither Simmons nor his guests are speaking ex cathedra. I would say it's clear from context that it's an opinion piece. It's a tricky area --- even if cleary demarcated as opinion, a statement can be libellous if it relies on a provable fact. On the other hand, hyperbolic, figurative language has generally been protected. And on yet a third hand, truth is an absolute defence against libel and Goodell's a fuckin' liar, so. I don't think it's at all clear that Simmons violated journalistic ethics, here. If ESPNs internal policy is that the talent can't insult the network, that's a different kettle of fish.
posted by Diablevert at 10:57 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is also extremely within the bounds of NYT v. Sullivan.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:00 AM on October 15, 2014

Rock Steady: he was criticising the NFL

And also daring ESPN to suspend him, as eriko pointed out in the phrase directly before your pull-quote. As the Sunday NFL Countdown guys would say, "Come on, man!"
posted by tonycpsu at 11:00 AM on October 15, 2014

Managed to post this in the wrong thread, but meet your new host of Meet The Press. NBC is courting a broader demo and the veil between sports and politics is dropping every day.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:09 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

"Yup... these are our leaders."
posted by delfin at 11:24 AM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

Thank you for that link to Deadspin's courting of Simmons, Rock Steady. It further led me to the ironclad case that Stevie Wonder isn't Blind. My favorite part of that whole post is that if you get to the Around the Horn videos everyone's joking around with Bomani, while Bob Ryan is projecting "kids these days" with his body language so hard that I'm amazed he's not rolling his eyes.
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:42 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

Speech is free unless someone else owns the megaphone.
posted by tommasz at 1:21 PM on October 15, 2014

Simmons had a rationale for calling Goodel a liar that he laid out in a pretty extensive column that I think was posted on Grantland prior to the podcast, so it seemed to me that in the podcast he just didn't want to rehash his entire column and just got right to the point. The column's basic point was that either Goodel/the NFL are complete idiots, or they're lying. There wasn't any actual proof offered in the column IIRC, just a common-sense argument that the Rice incident happened in a casino, and how stupid do you have to be to possibly think a casino isn't completely covered by security cameras, including inside the elevators. But, Simmons is apparently quite the gambler (I only know from reading his NFL picks columns), so maybe casino layout and design are more in the forefront of his mind than the NFL brass.
posted by LionIndex at 5:16 PM on October 15, 2014

About the traffic issue, ESPN easily draws more page views than Grantland, but fewer and fewer of them are mine anymore. Especially with basketball, they've paywalled almost every decent bit of writing on the site, and all that's worth checking anymore are the actually scores and stats. I'd love to read Chad Ford, but I'm not paying for the insider crap. Truehoop used to be a daily read for me, but there's less and less writing there, more inane videos. On the other hand, SBNation with its networks of blogs has taken what Henry Abbot tried to do and run with it. There's more information, more interesting commentary, and usually it's up faster. Grantland I'd read even if Lowe was the only one writing. Combining Lowe with Barnwell, Goldsberry, and the Masked Man, hell, that's an amazing chunk of writing talent there, and it is, at least for the moment, all free. I remain shocked that ESPN managed (at least this far) not to screw this up.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:49 AM on October 16, 2014

Hmmm. Bill Barnwell wrote the picks column again this week. Wonder if Simmons is in a funk...
posted by Trochanter at 10:07 AM on October 17, 2014

The silence around this is really weird to me. I spend a lot of time at ESPN and Grantland and it's just strange.
posted by Trochanter at 4:20 PM on October 18, 2014

Hello nobody. Well he's back. No change in tone:

"… people are tired of the Ray Rice story. He punched his fiancée out in an elevator and we were all horrified by the video. Nobody wants to watch him play football, so we don’t really care that the NFL may have violated his rights (and the collective bargaining agreement) by suspending him twice for the same offense. We don’t care that the Ravens knew about the second video — according to multiple reports — and never explained why they handled it the way they did. We don’t care that Roger Goodell re-suspended Rice because of “new evidence” from the second elevator video, even though Rice told Goodell on June 16 exactly what happened in that elevator and had multiple witnesses in the room with them (including an NFLPA attorney taking copious notes). We don’t care that Goodell later claimed that Rice’s June 16 account was “ambiguous” and that the video showed a “starkly different sequence of events,” even though Don Van Natta Jr. and Kevin Van Valkenburg reported on September 19 that “with his wife sitting by his side in a conference room, Rice told Goodell that he hit her and knocked her out, according to four sources.” (FOUR!) We don’t care that the NFL claims it never saw the second video, even though Rice and his team went into that June 16 meeting believing that the NFL had seen it — which is why he told the truth — and even though we know a law enforcement official mailed that video to the NFL’s director of security. We don’t care that the NFL diligently tried to keep Goodell from testifying about this under oath … and failed.

(Will we care in two weeks, when Goodell testifies under oath … and we find out if he violated the CBA by re-suspending someone for no real reason, or why the NFL seemingly tried to filibuster this story away? I hope so.)"

posted by Trochanter at 9:31 AM on October 25, 2014

Now this is happening. No way he is re-signing with ESPN.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:59 AM on November 6, 2014

It's not even about the Goodell thing. Stupid. If he leaves over this teapot tempest...
posted by Trochanter at 11:22 AM on November 6, 2014