Does Simmons Have The Cajones?
Jason Pinter at the HuffPo had a really good interview with Bill Simmons the other day that touched on something I’ve been wondering about recently: What would happen if Simmons left ESPN when his contract runs out next year? Here’s Simmons in the interview:
Part of me can’t shake the temptation of being the underdog again — like, launching my own sports site, hiring some talented writers and designers and trying to compete with the big guns. Like what Frank Deford did with the National. All right, the National lost $100 million. Bad example.
Interesting. As the title of this post implies, Simmons would have to have some pretty large cajones to leave ESPN and the guaranteed readers that come with being on such a large website. Thats not to say it wouldn’t be a good idea. In fact, I’d very much like to see it happen. I think its possible that leaving ESPN would be bad for Simmons financially but great for him as a writer. Right now Simmons is The Wire but if it was on FOX and not HBO. Pretty good but censored, held back by corporate suits. Forget the inability to use curse words, ESPN is notorious for not being able to laugh at itself, as Simmons himself has pointed out. It must be incredibly limiting not to be able to make fun of or comment on in a negative light anything having to do with ESPN, especially in the current environment when ESPN dominates so much. I mean Joe Morgan is just sitting there and Simmons has to keep his mouth shut. As a Simmons fan I’d like to see what would happen if he struck out on his own again. Of course thats easy for me to say, its not my life, but even still.
Also mad props to Pinter for calling out Simmons a bit on his initial trashing of Twitter:
JP: At first you were vehemently opposed to the concept of Twitter. It’s safe to say you’ve come around on it. What changed your mind? And do you feel like Twitter offers something that your columns, podcasts and books do not?
BS: I didn’t understand Twitter. I thought it was a place where Shaq let people know that he just ate a hot fudge sundae or something. Really, it’s the opposite: it’s a media/marketing vehicle disguised as a social network. What other place can celebrities, writers, athletes, talk shows, music bands, companies and everyone else connect immediately with fans and/or consumers? I started my Twitter account for selfish reasons: I wanted to have a place to post updates on my book signing tour and stuff like that. I never realized that I’d have so much fun tweeting. It’s become the deleted scenes for my DVD of columns and podcasts. For moments with a shelf life — say, the Red Sox winning on a walkoff grand slam — it’s the perfect place to comment on something that probably wouldn’t be saved for a column. And you know what else? It’s helped my writing a little because it’s a challenge to craft jokes within 140 characters — gets your brain cells going all the time — and I’m competitive so I like messing around with that. For a columnist like me, Twitter is like having a putting green: useless and helpful at the same time.
I’d still like some more acknowledgment from Simmons on how wrong he was but thats a start. On a related note, I’m currently debating going to Simmons’ midnight book signing tonight which kicks off his book tour. Right now I’m leaning towards not going, depends on how the Skins do I guess.
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