ok

rest assured

I liked Simmons in the old timey days of the internet, the AOL shit

it was like getting a copy of the REM EP Chronictown in 1985
and putting away Diver Down and liking Radio Free Europe

and Simmons like all of them makes his combat rock and takes the luchre

then he changed

I hate the NBA, so I hated him

be becomes a producer mogul and host

and does this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFTXOzsVOYs

and now I have to like him

shit man, this is disconcerting,

to quote the great Kasey Kasem
"its ponderous man.....f ing ponderous"

later
sabu

I caught that listening to the podcast, I think it's the recent one with one of his frat bros Joe House? First heard it I thought it harkened back to Simmons getting suspended by ESPN a few times for trash-talking Goodell or whatever he did to get in hot water with the ESPN/Disney brass. I was thinking if Harry and Megan had a podcast on spotify, the spotify folks probably wouldn't appreciate one of their expensive properties talking shite about another of their expensive acquisitions...but it sounds like Harry and Megan ditched spotify before Simmons comments.


Easy to hate Simmons: spoiled only child of a rich guy who got a Porsche for his 16th birthday. And his gambling picks are consistently bad. I imagine that's partly why spotify ponied up for the Ringer network of podcasts, the Ringer's gambling content. I think it was when everyone was trying ramp up on gambling content post-SCt decision legalizing gambling that spotify overpaid for Ringer.

Gotta give Simmons credit for being among the first in on blogging / internet publication of his writings. And then years later pivoting to podcasting almost as soon as the first iphone dropped and it became easy for folks to carry podcasts everywhere with them.

After failing on ESPN's NBA studio show and then with his weird HBO show, Simmons seems to have given up his dreams of being an on-camera TV personality--except when he tells Nephew Kyle to turn on the tiktok camera for a hot take; which they're recording video for the entire thing, so it's pure bit at this point.

And wasn't Grantland just an early attempt at an Athletic style "quality" sports writing focused site? which ESPN shutdown as soon as Simmons and his podcast left town.


30 for 30 will probably be what Simmons is best remembered for.

I haven't read too much about it but it seems like Simmons--a product of 80's and 90's endless cable tv watching--idea for 30 for 30 might've been similar to the apocryphal story of Brandon Tartikoff launching Miami Vice with a memo that simply read: MTV Cops (which apparently the MTV Cops memo being the origin of Miami Vice is false, but Golden Girls germinating from the idea of Miami Nice is legit?). I imagine Simmons watched as much 90's VH-1 as anyone else his age, probably more, given his insane knowledge of crap TV: 30-for-30 = Behind the Music for various moments in sports history.

Simmons got into hot water a few years ago with the woke mob. Ringer employees were trying to unionize and they had a twitter account publishing various info about the composition of Ringer's staff. Folks outside the Ringer---including the NY Times--noticed Simmons didn't hire many people who didn't look like him. Simmons knee-jerk response of "this isn't open mic night" just increased the volume of the pitchfork woke mob and chased him off twitter altogether for a year. Also, this was around the time Simmons highest profile hire, Ryen Russillo basically admitted to being a MAGA hat and seemed to say he voted like he did to lower his tax bill.

Simmons leaves twitter and spends the next year or so hiring any available black sports writer or ex-athlete he can find, including bringing in Big Wos from the Athletic and the poor man's Big Wos -- Jason Goff. Although I don't hear Goff much on any of the various Ringer hoops podcasts. Looks like Goff still writes for the Ringer. Raja Bell and Logan Murdock's NBA Show podcast definitely upgraded the Ringer's NBA content.

Everyone liked Cousin Sal's Simmons' voice mail bit, where Cousin Sal would do a piss-take Simmons impersonation and make fun of Simmons for his various man-crushes and personal habits. I dunno what happened with that. Was a weekly segment for quite a while and then it disappeared. Probably Simmons wife stepped in and told Sal's wife to tell Sal to knock it off.

Big fan of Simmons back in the day before all the Grantland stuff. Haven't listened to him in a couple years. Wouldn't mind listening to him and Klosterman yak it up about pop culture or Gen X stuff.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Early Grantland had pretensions toward being sort of an all-purpose prestige-lifestyle one-stop shop. If you remember Hipster Runoff and Carles, Carles got folded into Grantland early on. So did Chuck Klosterman. It was kind of an update of the old Page 2 in that respect.

I think Simmons gets a little too much credit for coming up with 30 for 30, which itself was an update of SportsCentury, the original ESPN spin on Behind the Music and A&E's Biography (a series that's a little lost to memory at this point, n'est-ce pas?). I guess the difference there is that Behind the Music never pulled down Barry Levinson.

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