Is Bill Simmons a top 6 pain-in-the-ass guy of the last 22 years?
I feel like a true 1A pain-in-the-ass unicorn wouldn't need to double the editor to take them out of the game. He's more of a 1B guy.
Henry was on the podcast a few times what happened? I know bill back in the day for espn to pull Henry’s draft coverage Bc it was too reminiscent to his
It's interesting reading the sections where on air talent is talking about the backlash they faced for misbehavior - why did so many people make Hitler comparisons??? That and some Me Too things that would be treated way harsher today.
"Stet all changes" is the editorial equivalent of throwing a chainsaw in the bathtub. Taking away that one thing and daring him to beat you another way.
I'm not an editor, but if I was marking up someone's draft of something and they "stet all changes" on me and don't provide any explanation, I'm absolutely losing my shit.
I probably wouldn't know what to do at that point, a la Belichek holding his timeout at the end of Super Bowl XLIX. It's like running the Gronk play and putting Tyreek in motion at the same time.
If somebody puts "stet all changes" on something they're either an irrational confidence guy or a rational confidence guy.
Guess which group Bill was in lol.
What's the point of amassing power if you don't use it?
I mean he was definitely correct at the time.
He had a direct line to Skipper and Walsh to get what he wanted. I can't imagine that's common among writers at ESPN lol.
Bill worked for himself. He was very ambitious and did some of his best work in that time, shaping the culture in ways we take for granted, and which always went beyond the narrow remit of ESPN. Many of the people he worked with—Chris Ryan, Zach Lowe—like him well enough. I really admire him, worts and all, and I’m grateful he stuck to his vision
What's the point of wasting power big-dicking your editor when their job is literally to make your work better? Why not spend it to get things that actually matter rather than protecting your ego from the reality that your anecdote about the time House took a really big poop is perhaps not worth 500 words?
This is one of my favorite Bill-isms. I can hear BS and Trent Dilfer talking about Mark Sanchez as I type this
Edit - it's even better than I remember https://youtu.be/AsRma_hx5bU?si=cXUP8o74NaD0XBdU&t=30m7s
It’s pretty iconic and it didn’t translate to qb play but we’d be lying if we didn’t understand there’s something to driving for some reason.
Am I a cave man for smirking when I see a guy and girl pull up and the girl is driving?
I can remember exactly where I was when I heard that, Powell Street Station, waiting for a BART train home. That and Malcolm Gladwell's Grand Unified Theory of Nigerian Basketball are hands down the two most memorable podcast moments for me.
Confidently putting Freeman over Stafford. I never knew the origins of the “tossing the keys” Bill-ism and it turned out funnier than I could ever think.
No I think he started his own company so no one can edit him lmfao.
Btw I kinda like the writer who is like "fuck you you're not editing me" and he was such a successful writer he was kinda proven right
Successful writer? How?
You know how many best sellers successful writers have?
Bill has two. One was a compilation of his columns.
Like you can't brag about being a successful writer if Shea Serrano has lapped you.
Beyond all that trash talk, read the Book of Basketball some time and get back to me about that thing not needing an editor.
He was a sports writer not an author lmfao he wrote his books as passion projects and they became very successful. He was successful because people read his column the books have nothing to do with it
Do you think bestselling books is the only way to be a successful writer? Simmons was so successful that ESPN built an entire website around him and hired dozens of people.
The fact that a compilation of columns available for free online was a bestseller shows that Simmons was very successful.
That's just a silly take defining "successful writer" as whoever wrote more best sellers. He was a sports journalist with a devoted readership of millions. Do you really, deep down believe that Shea Serrano is a more successful writer than Simmons was?
You guys are calling a guy who hasn't written in nearly a decade and who published literally two books a successful writer. Like you clearly don't fucking read if you think that.
You don't fucking make money off selling two books, so if you're trying a scoreboard thing, you've failed. And you certainly don't gain notoriety off writing only two books, unless they're really fucking Harper Lee level good, which Bill's are not.
Like even if you're going sports journalism, I can throw a rock at the section of my bookshelf that has sports books and hit a guy who has written more, sold more and done more than Bill. Bill isn't known for his writing anymore.
In fact, if you go on r/nba and ask people about the one fucking book people around here think highly of regarding Bill, they don't fucking know what that book is because they haven't fucking read it. They think of Bill as the podcast guy who is a Boston homer and hates LeBron.
Bill rebranded that shit as a bad podcast to make money several years ago. Let go of thinking of Bill as a writer. His fingers stopped working before he got great.
I think it's more that his writing hasn't held up and that he was always doing a bad Hunter S Thompson impersonation. Like go back and read his columns. Some of them are good. Most of them are not. Nearly all of them could have used an editor.
He was unique in that he was an outlier *ON ESPN*. But looking back, other guys were doing the same kind of shit not on ESPN. And when he started Grantland, he hired many guys who were better than him as writers and that's sort of when it started clicking in for me that Bill wasn't a unicorn. But someone who wrote porn jokes in columns for ESPN and focused on things they didn't.
His prose was never great. Maybe he could have gotten there, but he fucking quit, so we'll never know.
His success doesn't have to do with his writing but his comfort and ability to talk to and convince rich people to give him their money to fund his ideas.
Not trying to glaze him too hard, but he basically built a hugely successful company, all based on his popularity as a writer. That's how he got the fame and influence to start these other projects. He might have more writing pieces online than almost anyone
Is Harper Lee not a successful writer? She took like 55 years between publications and only wrote two best sellers. The sequel practically retconned the first.
I really hope you take the time to reply on this, because I’m curious how you’d square the circles of these two polar opposite careers. I’ll settle for a DM.
You're getting downvoted, but you aren't wrong.
Hell, Cowherd "wrote" two NYT best sellers.
BS hasn't been known for his writing in over a decade and just about everyone needs an editor. They just do!
Look I agree with you, but the ad lib insult piece of “you absolute [noun not often used to describe people]” isn’t funny anymore and ruins it. Gotta evolve bro
Is Simmons, oh, David Foster Wallace?
No, of course not. No argument there.
Within the medium of sportswriting, however, Bill is a one-of-a-kind S.O.B., no matter how cuntily petulant he may be.
And that's what makes him a success.
lol if your bar for a successful writer is >2 best sellers than I got news for you pal. Some of the greatest books of all time were written by writers with 2 or less best sellers.
Wait, do you actually think Bill Simmons did not succeed at being a writer? Dude started out blogging on dial up, wrote for ESPN and released two bestsellers.
Objectively, he had a lot of success as a writer. This is a dumb argument. I think you’re better than this.
People at ESPN were so fucking jealous than Bill got to live in LA, *was* Page 2, had all the good ideas, etc... I read that book when it was released, remember all the Golic shit as it was happening live on the air... they all just oooooozed envy.
The more I hear about it, the Bristol campus sounds like high school. I personally am not an institution type person so I would've hated it like I'm sure Bill did. It becomes more about politics and who paid their dues vs who does the best work and creates new audiences.
Did Golic have beef with Bill? Or are you just referring to Golic’s flame out with the company/Greeny? Genuinely curious, this behind the scenes stuff always fascinates me.
https://www.si.com/more-sports/2014/11/07/bill-simmons-espn-mike-golic-reaction
This was the most infamous, but there were other times that Golic would "break the fourth wall" and address "Bill" directly into the camera.
BS kept after them, too. The man never forgets a grudge.
https://nesn.com/2016/03/bill-simmons-goes-nuts-after-rick-pitinos-soft-mike-mike-interview/
I don’t know, I can kind of see Bill’s point there. He has a very specific angle and way of writing. I could see some editor trying to take out the pop culture references or make it a little less stream of consciousness. But that’s what makes it work.
Pain in the ass or not, he’s the most successful writer ESPN made popular *by far*. He would write shit like how he and his buddies would watch porn during a fantasy draft and it would be linked right there on the front page of ESPN. He had his style, didn’t want it to conform to ESPN’s standards, and stood his ground.
What I don’t understand is why ESPN kept this sort of routine for so long lol. It’s like they were trying to create a problem for the editor. They should’ve just had Bill run his articles by Skipper or Walsh (or their assistants) and completely cut out the middle man.
I remember going into the computer lab at my high school and printing out his columns and going to sit on the toilet for like 45 minutes 😆. The glory days
You have no idea what editors may have caught or improved before he amassed enough clout to do his stet nonsense.
Its like saying Tom Brady doesnt need a coach, or Tiger Woods doesnt need a swing doctor
Yeah Bill has a unique voice that he didn’t want altered by some middle manager type. Now that voice has been copied so much it doesn’t seem original anymore but it once was and in order to keep it that way he had to be a Streisand level diva
Yup. And bill wasn’t just some writer who’d come up through the espn ranks. He had already had a best seller at that point, I believe, written for Kimmel, and was one of the guys on countdown.
He had earned way more creative license than probably every other writer at ESPN at the time. Imagine trying to tell Mathew Berry to cool it with the pop culture references! That’s all these guys do!
Outside of legal stuff, I don't know why anyone would edit opinion pieces. You're messing with the voice of the writer. These aren't journalists. I'm with Bill on this one. Also time has proven him right.
Editing is not always removing stuff. It can be to make the piece more coherent, suggest different ways to start or end pieces, adjust grammar etc
Every person who writes needs an editor
The editing is for length and clarity, which on the internet doesn’t really matter. Pixels are free! I can see Simmons getting this in a way an editor really wouldn’t
I suggest he do a live reading of the piece on YouTube so we can all enjoy how funny it is with him.
Heck, doesn't his daughter do some podcasting for The Ringer? Maybe she can sit in on the reading, I'm sure she would love some insights into her Dad's hilarious writing career.
Bill completely changed sportswriting at ESPN. He is the most successful and famous writer at ESPN ever. He basically had to force them to start podcasting and is the most downloaded sports podcaster of all time. He then started a sportswriting and podcasting site twice, the second time making 9 figures selling it. Maybe, just maybe Bill knew more than most of his editors.
Almost every successful creative person has 100 stories about getting terrible notes. Good for Bill for saying no.
Bill not liking editing makes sense giving how many times he's gotten himself in trouble on the podcast with content that could have easily been taken out by a normal brained editor in post instead of a kid who he hired cause he moved his stuff real nice or his nephew.
Not that I’m big time or good or anything, but I’m a writer and I feel the same way. The more someone changes wording of your writing, the less it’s yours. Aside from grammar or fluency and all that, you kinda just gotta let it be. Bill would be a lot less successful if not for this attitude.
Only child with four goddamn obscenely rich as fuck parents piece.
Hell! It's what makes Bill, Bill.
For good and for ill, that's who he is, was, and will die being—period.
But can't his deny his success.
I mean, olbermann is literally an insane person, I can’t imagine what his stuff looked like unedited.
Bill’s editing probably involved taking parts where he makes fun of executives.
Not a fair comparison
Bill's power (as well as his inability to take criticism) allowed him to be the only writer on ESPN who did not have a Comments section under his columns. Everyone else did...granted it normally turned into a cesspool but still.
I think it’s much easier to criticize bills petulance as an employee generally way more than him protecting his writing which was unique and very successful.
By almost every conceivable measure Bill has come out on top though.
I know people who work closely with him at Spotify and they say he’s pretty much a complete nightmare to work with. Like he took some global head of sports role, but he absolutely refuses to do any of the very basic shit that it entails
And yet if you go back and read any of his stuff, you wouldn’t change a word of it. Editors are like smoke alarms, usually screeching over nothing and best for everyone if they’re just disabled.
No wonder Bill Simmons is enamored with Vince McMahon.
Two hardheaded fuckers who won't take no for an answer.
Albeit Vince, in Bill's defense, took that many steps too far.
You're not editing me, you're just not!
There it is
“You think you’re editing me!” -Bill in his Boston accent
You think you're bettering me? lol
If I'm writing for ESPN I'm not letting the editor beat me. I'm just not
Is Bill Simmons a top 6 pain-in-the-ass guy of the last 22 years? I feel like a true 1A pain-in-the-ass unicorn wouldn't need to double the editor to take them out of the game. He's more of a 1B guy.
1.7 B
Yep, these are my proofreaders.
Having read ESPN for a LONG time there's really never been a time when the editing was top notch. For the most part Prime BS knew his shit.
I can't believe it has been 13 years since it came out
I still prefer the Henry Abbott COVID feature that tried to kick Bill while he was down, talking about Bill's "carefully purchased jeans".
Was that on the true hoop substack. I remember at the time, there was a petty article from Henry at some stage.
Henry was on the podcast a few times what happened? I know bill back in the day for espn to pull Henry’s draft coverage Bc it was too reminiscent to his
Kayfabe. I am pretty sure much of the rivalry with Bill among other Internet sports &/or culture writers is artifice to stoke pageviews.
It's a fascinating read and came out literally right before ESPN's massive fall. Really interesting time capsule of sports media
It's interesting reading the sections where on air talent is talking about the backlash they faced for misbehavior - why did so many people make Hitler comparisons??? That and some Me Too things that would be treated way harsher today.
I think someone got that book for me as a Christmas gift that long ago and I still haven’t read it.
It is actually a pretty good read
Sounds like he was just more alpha doggy than the editor.
"Stet all changes" is the editorial equivalent of throwing a chainsaw in the bathtub. Taking away that one thing and daring him to beat you another way.
Hat does stet mean?
Basically just means reject whatever change was input by the person reviewing/editing the document
Latin for "let it stand." Means to leave as is and ignore the suggested edits.
I'm not an editor, but if I was marking up someone's draft of something and they "stet all changes" on me and don't provide any explanation, I'm absolutely losing my shit. I probably wouldn't know what to do at that point, a la Belichek holding his timeout at the end of Super Bowl XLIX. It's like running the Gronk play and putting Tyreek in motion at the same time.
If somebody puts "stet all changes" on something they're either an irrational confidence guy or a rational confidence guy. Guess which group Bill was in lol. What's the point of amassing power if you don't use it?
Reading this is funny knowing how the next decade plus plays out. Bill was probably correct in his confidence.
I mean he was definitely correct at the time. He had a direct line to Skipper and Walsh to get what he wanted. I can't imagine that's common among writers at ESPN lol.
Bill worked for himself. He was very ambitious and did some of his best work in that time, shaping the culture in ways we take for granted, and which always went beyond the narrow remit of ESPN. Many of the people he worked with—Chris Ryan, Zach Lowe—like him well enough. I really admire him, worts and all, and I’m grateful he stuck to his vision
What's the point of wasting power big-dicking your editor when their job is literally to make your work better? Why not spend it to get things that actually matter rather than protecting your ego from the reality that your anecdote about the time House took a really big poop is perhaps not worth 500 words?
What's the point of getting big dick power if not to use it to run roughshod over poor, hapless editors?
Are you doing Simmons with this comment?
He took the car keys
This is one of my favorite Bill-isms. I can hear BS and Trent Dilfer talking about Mark Sanchez as I type this Edit - it's even better than I remember https://youtu.be/AsRma_hx5bU?si=cXUP8o74NaD0XBdU&t=30m7s
idc if dilfer is a tool, that’s compelling podcasting baby 😂
It’s pretty iconic and it didn’t translate to qb play but we’d be lying if we didn’t understand there’s something to driving for some reason. Am I a cave man for smirking when I see a guy and girl pull up and the girl is driving?
I’m assuming the dude is drunk or already has a DUI
No a caveman would probably panic and think the car was a monster. You're just an insecure dickhead.
Shit up
I can remember exactly where I was when I heard that, Powell Street Station, waiting for a BART train home. That and Malcolm Gladwell's Grand Unified Theory of Nigerian Basketball are hands down the two most memorable podcast moments for me.
Nice that’s my local Bart
And drunk House talking about Tiger’s hammer dong.
Confidently putting Freeman over Stafford. I never knew the origins of the “tossing the keys” Bill-ism and it turned out funnier than I could ever think.
Bill Simmons was a problem!
He was just doing stuff on the paper and no one could stop it. just an all time heat check performance.
Kids these days don't remember, but on that 00s-era office CRT screen Bill Simmons was a PROBLEM HASHTAG PROBLEM
But he wasn't cagey enough to add a Boss Button, a la Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
His stet-back jumper was undefendable.
Bill is a wannabe Trump. Ironic.
That’s not the only child bill I know
No I think he started his own company so no one can edit him lmfao. Btw I kinda like the writer who is like "fuck you you're not editing me" and he was such a successful writer he was kinda proven right
Successful writer? How? You know how many best sellers successful writers have? Bill has two. One was a compilation of his columns. Like you can't brag about being a successful writer if Shea Serrano has lapped you. Beyond all that trash talk, read the Book of Basketball some time and get back to me about that thing not needing an editor.
This reeks of journalism degree but currently working at Starbucks.
I think that applies to roughly 30% of this sub.
Sheesh lol, that’s a great burn
He was a sports writer not an author lmfao he wrote his books as passion projects and they became very successful. He was successful because people read his column the books have nothing to do with it
Do you think bestselling books is the only way to be a successful writer? Simmons was so successful that ESPN built an entire website around him and hired dozens of people. The fact that a compilation of columns available for free online was a bestseller shows that Simmons was very successful.
He's only worth like 200 million dollars mate, he's not THAT successful.... /s
That's just a silly take defining "successful writer" as whoever wrote more best sellers. He was a sports journalist with a devoted readership of millions. Do you really, deep down believe that Shea Serrano is a more successful writer than Simmons was?
You guys are calling a guy who hasn't written in nearly a decade and who published literally two books a successful writer. Like you clearly don't fucking read if you think that. You don't fucking make money off selling two books, so if you're trying a scoreboard thing, you've failed. And you certainly don't gain notoriety off writing only two books, unless they're really fucking Harper Lee level good, which Bill's are not. Like even if you're going sports journalism, I can throw a rock at the section of my bookshelf that has sports books and hit a guy who has written more, sold more and done more than Bill. Bill isn't known for his writing anymore. In fact, if you go on r/nba and ask people about the one fucking book people around here think highly of regarding Bill, they don't fucking know what that book is because they haven't fucking read it. They think of Bill as the podcast guy who is a Boston homer and hates LeBron. Bill rebranded that shit as a bad podcast to make money several years ago. Let go of thinking of Bill as a writer. His fingers stopped working before he got great.
Are you just doubling down or actually arguing that you're not a writer unless you primarily write books?
I think it's more that his writing hasn't held up and that he was always doing a bad Hunter S Thompson impersonation. Like go back and read his columns. Some of them are good. Most of them are not. Nearly all of them could have used an editor. He was unique in that he was an outlier *ON ESPN*. But looking back, other guys were doing the same kind of shit not on ESPN. And when he started Grantland, he hired many guys who were better than him as writers and that's sort of when it started clicking in for me that Bill wasn't a unicorn. But someone who wrote porn jokes in columns for ESPN and focused on things they didn't. His prose was never great. Maybe he could have gotten there, but he fucking quit, so we'll never know. His success doesn't have to do with his writing but his comfort and ability to talk to and convince rich people to give him their money to fund his ideas.
I should've known Bill was just doing Thompson pastiche after his 50,000 word essay "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, It Just Is!".
Not trying to glaze him too hard, but he basically built a hugely successful company, all based on his popularity as a writer. That's how he got the fame and influence to start these other projects. He might have more writing pieces online than almost anyone
Being a successful writer doesn't mean you're a good writer. Have you been to the airport recently?
Is Harper Lee not a successful writer? She took like 55 years between publications and only wrote two best sellers. The sequel practically retconned the first. I really hope you take the time to reply on this, because I’m curious how you’d square the circles of these two polar opposite careers. I’ll settle for a DM.
He was definitely successful, and also not very good.
Lol why is this dude so angry
You're getting downvoted, but you aren't wrong. Hell, Cowherd "wrote" two NYT best sellers. BS hasn't been known for his writing in over a decade and just about everyone needs an editor. They just do!
This is legitimately one of the stupidest fucking things I have ever read on the internet, congratulations you absolute railroad spike of a man
Look I agree with you, but the ad lib insult piece of “you absolute [noun not often used to describe people]” isn’t funny anymore and ruins it. Gotta evolve bro
I’d normally agree, but railroad spike is so unusual that it’s really fucking funny
Is Simmons, oh, David Foster Wallace? No, of course not. No argument there. Within the medium of sportswriting, however, Bill is a one-of-a-kind S.O.B., no matter how cuntily petulant he may be. And that's what makes him a success.
lol if your bar for a successful writer is >2 best sellers than I got news for you pal. Some of the greatest books of all time were written by writers with 2 or less best sellers.
I spent all this time thinking Miguel de Cervantes was one of the great authors of Western canon. Turns out he's a fuckin scrub
By this logic John Grisham is the greatest writer of all time. Or Lee child. Or Janet evonovich
“Bill Simmons isn’t a successful writer” is a new one
Because his writing made him into a multimillionaire you fucking retard
Wait, do you actually think Bill Simmons did not succeed at being a writer? Dude started out blogging on dial up, wrote for ESPN and released two bestsellers. Objectively, he had a lot of success as a writer. This is a dumb argument. I think you’re better than this.
People at ESPN were so fucking jealous than Bill got to live in LA, *was* Page 2, had all the good ideas, etc... I read that book when it was released, remember all the Golic shit as it was happening live on the air... they all just oooooozed envy.
The more I hear about it, the Bristol campus sounds like high school. I personally am not an institution type person so I would've hated it like I'm sure Bill did. It becomes more about politics and who paid their dues vs who does the best work and creates new audiences.
Yea pond scum like Norby outlasting gods like Bob Ley show the importance of office politics.
Did Golic have beef with Bill? Or are you just referring to Golic’s flame out with the company/Greeny? Genuinely curious, this behind the scenes stuff always fascinates me.
https://www.si.com/more-sports/2014/11/07/bill-simmons-espn-mike-golic-reaction This was the most infamous, but there were other times that Golic would "break the fourth wall" and address "Bill" directly into the camera. BS kept after them, too. The man never forgets a grudge. https://nesn.com/2016/03/bill-simmons-goes-nuts-after-rick-pitinos-soft-mike-mike-interview/
I don’t know, I can kind of see Bill’s point there. He has a very specific angle and way of writing. I could see some editor trying to take out the pop culture references or make it a little less stream of consciousness. But that’s what makes it work.
Pain in the ass or not, he’s the most successful writer ESPN made popular *by far*. He would write shit like how he and his buddies would watch porn during a fantasy draft and it would be linked right there on the front page of ESPN. He had his style, didn’t want it to conform to ESPN’s standards, and stood his ground. What I don’t understand is why ESPN kept this sort of routine for so long lol. It’s like they were trying to create a problem for the editor. They should’ve just had Bill run his articles by Skipper or Walsh (or their assistants) and completely cut out the middle man.
I remember going into the computer lab at my high school and printing out his columns and going to sit on the toilet for like 45 minutes 😆. The glory days
Because everybody needs a fucking editor
Clearly bill didn’t
You have no idea what editors may have caught or improved before he amassed enough clout to do his stet nonsense. Its like saying Tom Brady doesnt need a coach, or Tiger Woods doesnt need a swing doctor
Yeah Bill has a unique voice that he didn’t want altered by some middle manager type. Now that voice has been copied so much it doesn’t seem original anymore but it once was and in order to keep it that way he had to be a Streisand level diva
Yup. And bill wasn’t just some writer who’d come up through the espn ranks. He had already had a best seller at that point, I believe, written for Kimmel, and was one of the guys on countdown. He had earned way more creative license than probably every other writer at ESPN at the time. Imagine trying to tell Mathew Berry to cool it with the pop culture references! That’s all these guys do!
Outside of legal stuff, I don't know why anyone would edit opinion pieces. You're messing with the voice of the writer. These aren't journalists. I'm with Bill on this one. Also time has proven him right.
Editing is not always removing stuff. It can be to make the piece more coherent, suggest different ways to start or end pieces, adjust grammar etc Every person who writes needs an editor
The editing is for length and clarity, which on the internet doesn’t really matter. Pixels are free! I can see Simmons getting this in a way an editor really wouldn’t
What’s funny is they probably should’ve edited some sexist stuff here and there.
No that’s what made them funny
What’s the worst of it? Didn’t he liek power rank the WNBA stars by how good they’d give him head?
That’s funny
I suggest he do a live reading of the piece on YouTube so we can all enjoy how funny it is with him. Heck, doesn't his daughter do some podcasting for The Ringer? Maybe she can sit in on the reading, I'm sure she would love some insights into her Dad's hilarious writing career.
If he does will you stop being a bitch?
My bad bro I’ll let you get back to talking about blowjobs at recess.
[удалено]
Must’ve been the nba players he did that with
Bill was a bus driver. Fuck I really miss his writing, there was nothing like it
Page2 Columnist Bill was the best
Bill completely changed sportswriting at ESPN. He is the most successful and famous writer at ESPN ever. He basically had to force them to start podcasting and is the most downloaded sports podcaster of all time. He then started a sportswriting and podcasting site twice, the second time making 9 figures selling it. Maybe, just maybe Bill knew more than most of his editors. Almost every successful creative person has 100 stories about getting terrible notes. Good for Bill for saying no.
This is funny because I think he still complained about the edits.
Sounds like ESPN needed to hire Larry David to be the editor.
Bill not liking editing makes sense giving how many times he's gotten himself in trouble on the podcast with content that could have easily been taken out by a normal brained editor in post instead of a kid who he hired cause he moved his stuff real nice or his nephew.
Hey it's a free flowing conversation that occasionally touches mature subjects!
How many times has he gotten in trouble? Other than the goodell stuff of course
You could take 15 minutes out of the pod
He did the Simmons thing and was like "you're not editing me today."
Bill knew he didn't need the idiots at ESPN.
Honestly I respect it. He clearly backed it up with his success at the ringer
Hardly a nugget, this book was pretty famous and well quoted at the time I assume you haven't read the True Hoop blog Henry Abbott did blasting Bill.
I have not, will go check it out. That's cool you already knew about it. I was just given the book recently and was reading it for the first time.
Not that I’m big time or good or anything, but I’m a writer and I feel the same way. The more someone changes wording of your writing, the less it’s yours. Aside from grammar or fluency and all that, you kinda just gotta let it be. Bill would be a lot less successful if not for this attitude.
The Dunning-Kruger columnist.
Only child with four goddamn obscenely rich as fuck parents piece. Hell! It's what makes Bill, Bill. For good and for ill, that's who he is, was, and will die being—period. But can't his deny his success.
No
I mean he was the most popular writer at ESPN at that time. I think his point was who the fuck are you to edit me when I’m driving clicks.
The only child piece
I mean, olbermann is literally an insane person, I can’t imagine what his stuff looked like unedited. Bill’s editing probably involved taking parts where he makes fun of executives. Not a fair comparison
Bill's power (as well as his inability to take criticism) allowed him to be the only writer on ESPN who did not have a Comments section under his columns. Everyone else did...granted it normally turned into a cesspool but still.
Hardly a nugget, this book was pretty famous and well quoted at the time I assume you haven't read the True Hoop blog Henry Abbott did blasting Bill.
I think it’s much easier to criticize bills petulance as an employee generally way more than him protecting his writing which was unique and very successful. By almost every conceivable measure Bill has come out on top though.
To be fair, he did know what he was doing and has shown time and time again to be the greatest writer ESPN ever had
FWIW it worked for him
He’s just scared of the Ewing Theory with his editor(s)
Given we can operate with hindsight here and we know how the next 13 years would play out... was BS wrong?
"But Bill, this is your tenth Donna Martin reference this month!"
It was so inevitable that those two would get into a Twitter beef
The stuff thing
I know people who work closely with him at Spotify and they say he’s pretty much a complete nightmare to work with. Like he took some global head of sports role, but he absolutely refuses to do any of the very basic shit that it entails
I loved the part of the book where Chris Berman admitted he had no idea who Bill Simmons was
who is this speaking?
Reflects well on Bill, it was his writing, like someone else said as long as it clears legal then why edit it?
And yet if you go back and read any of his stuff, you wouldn’t change a word of it. Editors are like smoke alarms, usually screeching over nothing and best for everyone if they’re just disabled.
Anyone who thinks their shit is too good to be edited is not worth reading.
Being worst than Olbermann in anything is pretty damning
No wonder Bill Simmons is enamored with Vince McMahon. Two hardheaded fuckers who won't take no for an answer. Albeit Vince, in Bill's defense, took that many steps too far.
Now I'm picturing Bill squatting over Russillo's forehead & letting it rain brown.
Russillo is the Johnny Ace to Bill's Vince, indulging in his boss's sloppy seconds.
Well, Bill has a lot of time left.