Saturday, May 9, 2015

Top 12 Takeaways From ESPN Firing Bill Simmons

Off The Chain
12) It's absolutely OK to dislike everyone involved here, because, well, Reasons

11) The editorial chill for Grantland's remaining writers should be enough to prevent the use of air conditoning

10) This finally ensures the Fair and Balanced coverage of the NFL and Roger Goodell, who has been previously unable to get favorable coverage of a league with Absolutely No PR Issues Whatsoever

9) Between this, DeflateGate's likely upcoming Tom Brady suspension, the Red Sox pitching woes and the Celtics and Bruins being out of the playoffs, Boston Fan will finally get to tell you how hard he's got it

8) Both fans of the Grantland Basketball Hour are going to be powerfully disappointed

7) The mood at the ESPN HQ in Bristol was said to be joyous over Simmons' departure, because yes, ESPN only hires and employs Mean Girls

6) Simmons has somehow gone Radio Silent for the entire day of his termination, because being 45 can sometimes allow for the possibility of wisdom, or at the very least, gives you the ability to avoid LeSean McCoy Syndrome and Lawyer Up more effectively

5) Aggrieved White Guy wil note, far too often for anyone's comfort, that Stephen A. Smith is still employed while Simmons is not (and fail to realize that Smith is given his clickbait lines by ESPN)

4) We should all feel very bad for Simmons, who will likely only make 50% more than his last salary after a 4-way bidding war, rather than 2X and five-way

3) The final straw was said to be Simmons using a WWE catchphrase to degrade Goodell in an appearance on Dan Patrick's non-World Wide Lemur radio show, which is at least six nouns of Things You Don't Need To Think About

2) Doing this on a Friday with nice weather and tons of Actual Games to pay attention to ensures that ESPN's future lack of coverage will be only slightly less obvious

1) Keith Olbermann hasn't said anything too telling about this on Twitter, which either shows the wisdom of age, the ability of ESPN to censor, or that being fired a dozen times in your professional life means you've learned what not to do on days like these

1 comment:

snd_dsgnr said...

I tend to fall somewhere in between the two camps on Simmons, I sometimes find his writing entertaining but can certainly see how he grates on people.

Having said that, it's not exactly a good look for ESPN that they're firing one of their biggest names because he dared to say the plainly obvious truth about Goodell on a couple of occasions.