Scratch Bill Simmons off the Media Free Agent List

[VanCitySportsGuy]

http://deadspin.com/5539777/espn-wins-the-courtship-of-bill-simmons?skyline=true&s=i

Simmons is worth every penny ESPN pays him. Both of his books have been on the NY Time Best Seller list, he has one of the most popular podcasts out there, has over a million twitter followers, his columns draw a lot of traffic, and his audience is mostly teenagers/20's/30's.

Also the 30 for 30 series has been successful and he's an executive producer for it.

On the flip side, Simmons has one of the best sport media jobs out there. He works mostly from home and gets paid a lot of money. His podcasts and columns don't have a set schedule so he's not restricted by deadlines.

I have 2 concerns about Simmons though. The first is that he's hanging out more and more with celebs/sport figures so he can't be as critical/make fun out of certain people anymore. The second is that I wouldn't be surprised if ESPN makes his columns a ESPN Insider benefit. Up to this point I have refused to pay for ESPN Insider but if Simmons goes behind this wall, I will have to think about signing up.

Excluding TV guys, I don't think it's a stretch to say he's the most popular sports media member out there.

[born_bad]

Re: Scratch Bill Simmons off the Media Free Agent List

I've always liked him (doesn't hurt that I grew up and currently live in the Boston area). I've become a little disappointed that he mostly does podcasts now as opposed to writing columns and the writing is almost 100% exlusive to the NBA. I know he's a NBA nut, but he used to have more variety in his columns. His MLB/NFL topics are very few and far between.

[Thrasha]

Re: Scratch Bill Simmons off the Media Free Agent List

IMO I think Simmons is smart to write mostly about Basketball. You gotta stay in your lane, and I don't think their is any better basketball writer in the game right now.

I'm glad to see he's finally opened himself up to understanding the importance of sabermetrics in baseball. His baseball columns have been almost brutal at times the past couple years because of his lack of interest in supporting his thoughts nothing more than just a "gut feeling".

I for one LOVE his podcasts. They are my favorite thing to listen to around the house or in my car. He's gotten a lot better at interviewing guests and he always tries to get a wide range of guests on the podcast as well. One of his latest one's with JJ Reddick was awesome. I've never really had a chance to hear JJ talk about basketball but it was great to hear him talk about the Boston series, about learning his role in the NBA, and his time at Duke.

I hope Bill was able to get ESPN to back off on the censorship aspect of things though. He'll be his most effective at ESPN with pretty much anything he'd need at his disposal, but I still would have been very interested in seeing him create his own sports page. Kinda similar to what Carolla has done with his podcasts.

[VanCitySportsGuy]

Re: Scratch Bill Simmons off the Media Free Agent List

In the past he said he couldn't write as many columns because he was busy working on his book and now he's busy with 30 for 30.

Pumping out podcasts is a lot less time consuming than writing articles so I think the days of him writing at least 3+ articles a week are gone. I wish he would do more mailbags but I've really enjoyed the podcasts. He covers the topics I'm interested in (sports/tv shows/entertainment) and he usually has 2-3 podcasts a week.