Yesterday, I spent too much time reading the Hollywood Reporter’s cover story on Bill Simmons. Simmons was once one of the most powerful sports writers in America, a “bro whisperer” and major force on ESPN. I knew of Simmons mostly from his now-defunct but once-excellent site Grantland. Well, Simmons had a huge falling out with ESPN last year over the NFL and Roger Goodell. Following that, Simmons was dumped by ESPN and Grantland was shuttered. Simmons has a new show on HBO debuting June 22, so to promote the show, Simmons gave a comprehensive, bitchy and gossipy interview to THR. Then within hours of the interview going wide, Simmons issued an apology for all the sh-t he talked in the interview. This is his M.O. at this point – sh-t talk and apologize, sh-t talk and apologize and on and on. You can read the full THR piece here, and here are some highlights:
On the exodus of talent from ESPN: “They’ve [ESPN] now gotten rid of everybody who is a little off the beaten path. Ask yourself this: ‘Who would work there that you respect right now?'”
The people at ESPN trying to get him fired: “[Those people] were just trying to cause trouble. It was f—ing high school.”
Being blindsided by his firing: “It was f—ing shitty. By the way they handled it, you would think I played grab-ass with some makeup assistant or something.”
His reflections after a year: “I’m not blameless. I acted like a brat a couple times, and there are things I could have handled better.”
His feminism: His daughter Zoe Simmons is 11-year-old and a natural athlete. “One of the ironies of my life is that I was definitely a chauvinist with men’s and women’s sports before. I’d always make WNBA jokes and stuff like that. And now I’m like a feminist, and it’s all because of her,” he says, as his ponytailed daughter waves at him between plays. “In L.A., they have all these academy teams for boys, and the girls are treated like second-class citizens. The fields we have are worse than the boys’, too. It all just drives me f—ing crazy.”
His dream interview is Michelle Obama: He spins through his wish list for Any Given Wednesday guests, awarding the top spot to Michelle Obama in part because girls’ sports is a subject he’d love to dive into with her. “I couldn’t get her on my podcast, but maybe I could get her on this because it’s HBO.”
THR acknowledges at several points that what went down between Simmons and the ESPN brass was immature boy drama for the most part, and I guess I’m still mystified as to how bad-mouthing Roger Goodell would get ANYONE fired. Yes, ESPN had corporate interests with the NFL, but Goodell is universally criticized by many different people for many different reasons. As for Simmons’ late-in-life conversion to feminism because he wants his daughter to have the same opportunities as boys… I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. But wouldn’t it be amazing if there wasn’t so much toxic bro culture in sports, and wouldn’t it be amazing if it didn’t take “having a daughter” for men to realize that women and girls get the short end of the stick all the time?
Photos courtesy of WENN, THR.
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