There's no way to help anybody. There's no magic sentence to tell somebody. Really it comes down to, are you willing to outwork everybody else? Are you will to do whatever it takes to get a chance. And if you get that chance, how hard are you going to work once you get it? And that's it.
Bill Simmons on the B.S Report podcast explaining his ESPN.com origin story
Bill Simmons, the Internet's best-known sportswriter and one of ESPN's top voices, has been suspended for three weeks after a podcast in which he called out NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
Simmons, who had earlier written an angry screed wondering how Goodell is even still employed, snapped off a three-minute rant on his "B.S. Report" podcast that left no doubt about his perceptions of the commissioner:
"Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. I’m just saying it. He is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test, that guy would fail. For all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such [expletive]ing [expletive]. It really is, it’s such [expletive]ing [expletive]. For him to go into that press conference and pretend otherwise ... I was so insulted."
Simmons, no stranger to discipline from ESPN, knew what he was doing, and what he was risking. Elsewhere in the podcast, he effectively dared ESPN to punish him: "I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell, because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone. The commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast ... Please. Call me and say I'm in trouble. I dare you.”
RIC BUCHER: (13m 20s) The players who play it straight... who don't complain to the referees on a regular basis those are the guys who aren't being respected by the officials. It's only if you whine and cry about every single thing do you get those kind of calls.
To me Chris Paul, the most outrageous thing is he's doing all that on the defensive end and yet if they call him for anything now he's outraged that they'd ever blow the whistle... he diminishes his star by that
Ric Bucher in conversation with Bill Simmons (B.S. Report, May 5)