He tweeted about loving Stewart's bullshit monologue last night and alluded to thinking he's not going away for long. They share a manager and both have done extraordinary things creatively in different fields and to different degrees. O'Leary was a guest on Stewarts show and bluntly said Stewart walked away from a 50 mill guarantee to stay. They impacted and dominated two vastly different fields so I don't know how they would collaborate, but the tweet made me think more on that subscription network rumor the terrible website Gawker put out earlier this summer.pappymojo said:And to call them out on their bullshit.
nattysez said:My expectations are way too high, but his first month at his new writing place (which is still TBD, as far as I know) could be a tour de force if he has it in him:
- multi-part rundown of NBA playoffs, possibly series-by-series
- multi-part rundown of NBA off-season
- team-by-team NBA preview
- takedown of Goodell
- team-by-team NFL preview
Of course, there's also a chance he's done writing.
PedroKsBambino said:I think a takedown of Goodell is quite possible; it's been a big chunk of his tweets recently and he's clearly both passionate about it and thinking about it.
I would not expect a lot of the rest, though...
Great. I wonder how many conference calls it took to release Sal from Disney corpo grips for him to appear on a non-Disney podcast?nattysez said:Simmons just tweeted that he'll be back to podcasting on Oct. 1. He implies that he and Cousin Sal will be working together again, but not until then.
I agree with you that ESPN will not be his first target. I think he'll be mostly positive about his new employer, talk about how excited he is to be given the creative freedom of HBO, and only tangentially knock ESPN. Moreover, my guess is that Simmons had a "non-disparagement" clause in his ESPN contract which is likely still in effect. Employment lawyers will know this better, but I've seen those clauses remain in place for as long as 1-3 years after the employee's departure. If so, hopefully his vitriol will be focused on Roger Goodell, relentlessly, and not ESPN, which he can hold for later.Kenny F'ing Powers said:I can't imagine his first show will be about ESPN. He's had some time to settle down. Simmons is all the things we know him to be (thin skinned, vindictive, etc), but I'm almost certain ESPN has some language in contracts about discussing being fired/behind the scenes ESPN stuff. When an entity can role out an army of lawyers, people tend to "do the right thing" and simply turn the other cheek.
Now, in 2 years when ESPN numbers continue to fall and someone includes firing Bill Simmons as one of their mistakes, they will do what ESPN is known to do and leak shitty commentary about Simmons. In the moment, Bill will follow suit and do what he is known to do, which is open is big mouth.
Until then, I predict Simmons gives nothing more than 2-3 minutes of vanilla commentary about the whole situation.
http://recode.net/2015/09/01/apples-interest-in-original-content-included-bill-simmons/
And more recently, Apple showed interest in signing up former ESPN star Bill Simmons to an exclusive audio podcast deal. Apple media boss Eddy Cue discussed the idea a couple of times with Simmons this summer, say people familiar with the talks, who say that they were preliminary at best.
In July, Simmons ended up signing a “major exclusive multi-year, multi-platform agreement” with HBO; an HBO rep says that deal includes a podcast that should debut in October. It’s reasonable to assume that those podcasts will be available on Apple’s iTunes platform, as well as other outlets.
JBill said:God bless Simmons and his Twitter account. I care not at all about how he is the Pats biggest homer, I need some big media name to counteract all this rehashed Spygate bs.
Good, because at least Ken Tremendous is safe from Deadspin's mockery. They've already taken Simmons apart.nattysez said:
I came here to say exactly the same thing. He and Ken Tremendous are saving my sanity.
drleather2001 said:where's the ken tremendous stuff?
Top Gear is a good example. Contracts not renewed, and they still had to deal with non-competes within Britain.JimD said:Didn't his contract with ESPN end? Is it common to have such a clause once the personality has fulfilled their obligations and have moved on to the next contract with someone else?
JimD said:Didn't his contract with ESPN end? Is it common to have such a clause once the personality has fulfilled their obligations and have moved on to the next contract with someone else?
nattysez said:So is he going to run his podcast operation himself? It seems like there should've been an announcement by now if he was doing podcasts in partnership with someone. Or is this part of his HBO deal?
Redline13 said:
Eddie Jurak said:I hated those Guess the Lines podcasts. But I'll tune into this one in the hopes that the topic of Roger Goodell comes up
Nice details. However, petty is ESPN's middle name so I would expect them to be stingy with allowing Bristol talent on his podcast. We'll see.Chad Finn said:Few more details on the podcast:
Chad Finn said:Few more details on the podcast: