When asked why he is writing less frequently, ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons gave a surprisingly blunt statement to Deadspin about his relationship with his employer: Neil Best of Newsday got the official response from ESPN:Yes, I still work for ESPN. No, I'm not writing for ESPN.com as much - my choice, not theirs. That's just the way it will be from now on, unfortunately. I'd have more to say, but I'd end up being profane and I don't want to offend Buzz Bissinger. ...
I still love writing my column and only re-signed last year because I really did believe that we had hashed out all the behind the scenes bullsh-- and come to some sort of agreement on creative lines, media criticism rules, the promotion of the column and everything else on ESPN.com. Within a few months, all of those things changed and certain promises were not kept. It's as simple as that.
"Bill is an exceptional talent with a unique voice that we're proud to bring to fans. In any creative environment that features talented people, there will inevitably be differences. As we have in the past, we'll continue to work through them."So even though they think he's an "exceptional talent," ESPN has made Simmons mad, and as a result he has chosen to write for them less frequently. But Simmons fans now have another option: His blog.
In his March 15 column, Simmons mentioned that before he was a famous writer, he spent a few months following South Boston High's 1996 state championship team, and that he wrote a 15,000-word article about that team that he was never able to get published.
Well, now that 15,000-word piece has been published, at The Sports Guy Blog. He says now that it wasn't published because "my writing probably wasn't good enough," but the truth is that there just aren't many publications interested in running 15,000-word articles about high school basketball teams, and you could write something awfully good on the subject and fail to get it published anywhere. Reading the piece now, you can certainly see the talent in Simmons, who would have been about 27 at the time he wrote it.
In that March 15 column, Simmons wrote, "I'll always regret not going all out, rolling the dice and writing a full-fledged book about the team." My advice to Simmons: It's not too late to write that book. And it sounds like you'd enjoy it more than you enjoy working for ESPN.
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. A new blog from Simmons?!?! No way! Now there are even more opportunities to avoid reading anything this douche has to say.
Posted at 12:45PM on May 15th 2008 by roger
2. As a professional journalist for over 20 years followed by 10 years of teaching journalism at the university level, I feel I have some bona fides to comment on Bill Simmons. First, if he had submitted his typical professional stuff to me as an academic assignment, he would have flunked. Second, in admission of the generational gap, I will admit that I am an "old fogey" if that term is defined to mean someone who cares about substantive subjects and intellectual thought. Simmons, on the other hand, typifies his "dumbed down since birth generation"; I phrase it that way to slightly mitigate my attitude towards him and to be fair. By the time he was born the current anti-intelluctual trend had already steamrolled most of society. He is what he is - - a product of his time and it may be that an apt metaphor for his work is the Seinfeld Show that dominated many of his formative years and was famously known as a "show about nothing". Simmons' interminable references to celebrities and pop culture and his endless accounts of high times with his buddies are writng about nothing. I read him for years because, like me, he does seem to truly love basketball. Eventually I had to stop because he was making my eyeballs bleed with his crap.
Posted at 5:50PM on May 15th 2008 by Dennis McCarthy
3. @Dennis - I'm sure your preferred style of writing for Simmons surely would have made him the most popular sports writer in the country, the most influential sports journalist in 15 years and a $500,000 a year salary.
Oh wait, that's what his ACTUAL writing style did. Your suggestions would have turned him into Woody Paige. Yeah, that would have been AWESOME.
Posted at 8:35PM on May 16th 2008 by Johnny D