Bill Simmons' discontent with ESPN back in spotlight after Mike Golic feud, You don’t need a doctorate in ESPNology to deduce that Bill Simmons is not pleased with his employer right now. His tweets on Thursday about ESPN Radio's Mike Golic had me recalling a memorable scene in A Few Good Men when Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) explained to Lieutenant Commander JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) and Lieutenant Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollack) that Colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) was dying to say he ordered a Code Red.
Take it away Mr. Cruise:
"I think he wants to say it. I think he's pissed off that he's gotta hide from us. I think he wants to say that he made a command decision and that's the end of it. He eats breakfast 80 yards away from 4000 Cubans who are trained to kill him, and no one's gonna tell him how to run his base.”
Simmons eats breakfast in Los Angeles and the base he runs is filled with sports hipsters and film and TV nerds as opposed to Cubans. But I think the Grantland editor-in-chief (“You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on Countdown, you need me on Countdown!”) has been dying to talk publicly about the three-week suspension ESPN dropped on him last month, and ESPN Radio’s Mike Golic provided the rocket fuel on Thursday after Golic’s Mike & Mike radio show played a clip of Simmons saying (on an ESPN Radio show hosted by Colin Cowherd) that the current situation with LeBron James reminded him "a little bit" of when baseball's Albert Pujols left the Cardinals for the Angels.
I was listening to Cowherd's show at the time and the Pujols observation came after a long conversation between Simmons and Cowherd about James's slow start in Cleveland. If you listened to the entire segment, it was clear Simmons wasn't going for a headline. His Pujols take was almost an afterthought. What was also clear was that neither Golic or co-host Mike Greenberg had heard the full context of the Simmons-Cowherd conversation. Every ESPN Radio show gets audio from other shows, often part of an effort by the brand to push a narrative for that day.
"I think it’s one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve heard four games into a season in my life in any sport," Golic said of Simmons’ take. “That’s what I’ll say about Bill Simmons. So, you know, he grabbed a headline, which is something I know he loves -- and that’s one of the most ridiculous lines I’ve ever heard in any sport in my life. Four games into a season. I don’t even…that’s ridiculous."
When Simmons received word of what Golic said, he let Golic know he had messed with the wrong Marine.
“What Mike and Mike did today was absolute garbage,” Simmons tweeted. “I would say I lost respect for that show, but I never had it. For an ESPN Radio show to pull an interview out of context from another ESPN Radio show, then play the moral authority card, is disgusting. Have the balls to call me to discuss it on the show. Don't pull it out of context just because you need fodder for a segment. Pathetic.”
You can read the recap of Simmons' comments here.Of course the larger context to Simmons’s tweets on Thursday is the three-week suspension last month ESPN handed Simmons after he called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a "liar" on his podcast, The B.S. Report, following Goodell’s press conference Sept. 19 on the league's ongoing domestic violence issues. Of significant importance, Simmons dared ESPN management to discipline him for those comments on the same podcast. And management obliged.
ESPN brass does not like when its employees attack each other on social media, and it has disciplined employees in the past (including Simmons) for such actions, though the length of such discipline has been about as consistent as J.R. Smith. On Thursday, a network spokesperson told Sports Illustrated “we won’t be commenting” on this latest scrap. Simmons also declined comment Thursday night to SI. Earlier in the week, SI requested an interview with Marie Donoghue, an ESPN executive vice president of global strategy and original content and the direct boss of Simmons. There are few people in the company Simmons trusts more, and rightfully so. That interview was turned down by ESPN PR. "After talking with Marie, we are going to let his [Simmons] work speak for itself,” said an ESPN spokesperson.
One of the most astute observers of ESPN is James Andrew Miller, the author of the best-selling These Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World of ESPN. I tracked him down on Thursday.
“ESPN goes out of its way to say we do not like when members of our network attack other members of the network and it is clear that is exactly what Golic did,” Miller said. “Simmons is a guy defending himself here. If Bill Simmons had said the same exact thing Mike Golic did about Mike Golic or any other notable ESPN personality, people would be saying he has to be suspended for that. You don't attack someone’s journalistic DNA. You don't go after their work like that. But instead Bill was on the receiving end so with him it quickly becomes not about the inciting incident but his reaction. I think this time that is unfair."
