We are nothing if not original. Er, nothing if not-not original in this case. Anyway, we were constitutionalizing early this afternoon when we ran across Deadspin’s post about what Bill Simmons is up to these days. Turns out, we had seen the same thing yesterday afternoon. Go figure, right? Anyway, when we saw Leitch’s headline, we actually thought he was going to talk about something different than the out-of-nowhere-I’m-working- on-another-novel drop, since Simmons usually lays those bombs gently down in a column. But whatever. The other topic that we wanted to cover was Simmons’ total over-denial of the whole Dan Patrick thing a few minutes earlier.
Care To Get Nice?
Chris (Orlando, FL): What are the odds of having The BS Report on ESPN Radio from 1pm-4pm in about 1 month?
SportsNation Bill Simmons: Zero. I’m not good enough and I’d never want to do a daily radio show
SportsNation Bill Simmons: I really like doing my podcast – think there’s some upside potential there, I like that you don’t have to take breaks and can just have a conversation with someone for 25-30 minutes.
SportsNation Bill Simmons: I don’t think there’s tremendous upside potential, but there’s definitely upside potential. I also like that people canb download them and listen to them on their commute home. I like being part of anyone’s subway experience.
Okay, a few things. First, Bill Simmons rarely ever answers questions in chats with multiple answers (the exception being when he’s sifting through his “Fantasy Sleepers for the Second Notes” from Matt Berry). So why the need to over qualify the “zero” answer twice more, with the second one being a total topic diversion? It’s like when your wife asks you if there were hookers involved in your Las Vegas trip and you say, “Absolutely not, honey,” and then immediately follow it up with a “I mean, J-Bug wanted to get them, but only because he was drunk,” then topping it off with a “Well, he was only drunk because we spent all night at the tables and not a strip club” line. It just sounds guilty.
Secondly, and this might be minor, but maybe you recall the little tiff between Simmons and Colin Cowherd? We’re not saying that Simmons is a revenge filled spitemonger by any means, but when someone uses their job to call us out about our job and we think we could probably do better work than they do…well, if we get an opportunity to do their job, we’ll take it. (Ed. Note: A better example would have been mentioning how Simmons constantly calls out announcers for being horrible and then deciding he wanted to give it a run himself by calling college basketball games on “the U” with “Stoner”.)
Finally, if you’re a writer, you want to write. That’s what you enjoy doing and what you want to keep doing, especially when you get paid well to do what you love. But the fact remains that if you have the opportunity to expand yourself into other media venues, you are going to take that chance. Period. See: Kornheiser, Tony; Wilbon, Michael; Marrioti, Jay; Paige, Woody; Olney, Buster. We wonder what they all have in common. And did Sports Guy not just re-up with the WWL? Are we incorrect on that? Because, if we were the most famous sports/pop-culture writer out there and were going to negotiate a new contract, we would demand more stuff. Like for instance, a chance to take our wildly popular column to the radio waves. Of course, we would need someone to vacate a prime time slot on ESPN airwaves in order to pull this off…
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I would love it, but I still doubt it. He’s an internet writer, not from a newspaper or on the air (like sportscenter). I know Al Gore’s ‘net has been around for a while, but there is still a large segment that listens to talk radio and would have absolutely no clue who he is.