re: ESPN suspends Bill Simmons for 3 weeks for Goodell tirade...

Why doesn't he just break away from espn again?

Go to E!. Go to TMZ Sports. Go to Turner Sports and NBAtv.

That dude has a following and espn better be fricking careful.

I hate goodell, hate espn, hate this simmons assclown, and they all look bad, so this is great.

Scummy people run too many things in the country.

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That dude has a following and espn better be fricking careful.

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Why? Are people going to stop watching all of their sports if he leaves? Any of their other programming?

The web stuff is just a luxury/why not overpay type of purchase just because they have a ton of cash and don't want any other sports organizations to have even the chance of gaining a significant foothold against them.

Simmons has had multiple opportunities to truly go independent or leave the nest for another network. Yeah, ESPN has probably made back its investment in Simmons plus some but this notion that he's got them by the short hair and they better watch their step is bordering on laughable.

Wow I really didnt think ESPN would give a shite. I thought he was being melodramatic when he says I hope they come after me. I thought that since he's on his own little branded site he'd be fine.

Also suspending him for three weeks is a PR blunder. Ray Rice got two, Simmons got three.

I hope he follows through. If he names the person or people who suspended him then that person can be questioned about whether the NFL put pressure on ESPN about the way they handled this and whether they responded to NFL pressure.

Simmons is an Exec Producer in Hollywood now. He and Conner Schell created 30 for 30. He was an Exec Producer on the film Million Dollar Arm. He REALLY doesn't need to cater to ESPN suits any more if he doesn't want to.

He just won an Emmy for 30 for 30 shorts. He has far more juice in the entertainment field now than he ever did before.

So he has a contract but he still comments about being suspended for wanting the porn star in his football pickem years ago. We know he holds grudges.

This may be the straw that broke the camels back.

If ESPN had said nothing the comments would have vanished this week. At the worst they could have just cut the comments out of the podcast. Instead they are taking him head on and making him a story.

Here is an article from four years ago about Simmons contract:
LINK

Take that story and add the success of Grantland, adding Simmons to the NBA Pregame and everything else Simmons has done for ESPN in the last four years. ESPN does not like talent becoming too big to be held down and Simmons may have reached the point where he really can't be disciplined if he doesn't agree with the company stance.

Frankly Simmons could walk from ESPN and just Produce Sports Docs and movies, write, do his own podcast when he wants, how he wants and with whom he wants, be his own boss and coast.


Book of Basketball made him some nice money, but 30 for 30 and Million Dollar Arm made him frick You money. We'll see if he executes the nuclear option and blows it all up.

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That dude has a following and espn better be fricking careful.

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it's funny because directly after i listened to the BS report where simmons said this shite, i listened to a nerdist podcast with kevin smith who was talking about how all that mattered was that he had a huge folloiwng/shite load of fans. he was saying that he was at the point in his career where he could take up any project he wanted to do and that he didnt have to cater to production companies or any of that bullshite any more because he, personally, has a large group of supporters that no one can take away from him. i think that simmons is almost at that point, honestly.

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Frankly Simmons could walk from ESPN and just Produce Sports Docs and movies, write, do his own podcast when he wants, how he wants and with whom he wants, be his own boss and coast.


Book of Basketball made him some nice money, but 30 for 30 and Million Dollar Arm made him frick You money. We'll see if he executes the nuclear option and blows it all up.

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I guess we'll see because if anything was going to make anybody say "frick you" and ride off to do your own thing, this would be it.

I make a hell of a lot less than Simmons and have a hell of a lot less clout but if my bosses tried to suspend me from my own twitter account (which, for the record, I don't even have), much less publicly humiliating me in this fashion, it would be off to greener pastures for me. Not many people can successfully be corporate and independent at the same time; Howard Stern is the probably the only one that really pulled it off and even he had to endure constantly getting fired to reach that position.

However, I do believe this suspension gets seriously knocked down, not out of fear of Simmons or his "going public" but because the narrative of the story is that he's being suspended 50% longer than a guy who knocked his wife out cold on camera and three times as long as his fellow employee who speculated that she may have kind of deserved it.

The suspension itself was kind of dumb, though I get it in the respect that he directly dared them to do it so they had to, but three weeks came from a place where someone wasn't thinking with a cool head and now ESPN has their own problem with the concept of disproportionate punishments.

Read Supa's post.

He's at that point. He should leave.

Be awesome if deadspin really upped their "frick espnness" and hired him to a mega deal. Not only did they suspend him but they pulled the podcast down, which makes me think it was way more nfl influenced than ESPN trying to prove a point to Simmons. If it was they wouldn't mind people listening "see this is what happens when you talk shite to ESPN." But shutting it down makes it pretty clear the nfl put pressure on them and they caved just like with the concussion doc