Bill Simmons has been plenty critical of ESPN since before the network decided to let him go, but now, ESPN’s president is stepping into the ring.
In a lengthy profile published by The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, Simmons ripped into his former employer, saying “Who would work there that you respect right now?” And while Simmons issued an apology to his former colleagues, the columnist still has reservations about ESPN’s top brass, namely, the fact that Disney CEO Robert Iger was a big supporter of bringing an NFL stadium to Los Angeles.
“One of my working theories was, maybe this was driven by Iger because he wants a team,” Simmons told the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg recently.
And when Rutenberg reached out to ESPN president John Skipper for a comment, Skipper wasn’t exactly thrilled.
“Bill would rather spin conspiracy theories and be perceived as a martyr than take responsibility for his own actions,” Skipper said. “Let me be unequivocal and clear and take responsibility for my actions: I alone made the decision, and it had nothing to do with his comments about the commissioner. I severed our relationship with Bill because of his repeated lack of respect for this company and, more importantly, the people who work here.”
This honestly is a battle no one is going to win. It’s hard for ESPN to say the NFL, to whom the network pays $1.9 billion a year for the rights to “Monday Night Football,” has no impact on its coverage. After all, ESPN suspended Simmons three weeks for his critical comments against commissioner Roger Goodell during Ray Rice’s domestic abuse case, and the network in the past hasn’t covered certain NFL transgressions as aggressively as others.
But at the same time, Simmons has pushed his commentary to the limit many times. He literally dared ESPN to suspended the first time he criticized Goodell, and when Iger told Simmons to cover the league “respectfully” — something Simmons himself said — he questioned Goodell’s “testicular fortitude” a few weeks later and wound up fired.
Simmons’ new show, “Any Given Wednesday,” premieres June 22 on HBO, where he’ll have basically no limits, so don’t expect Simmons vs. ESPN to end any time soon.
Thumbnail photo via Hollywood Reporter video
