The Ringer<\/a><\/em>, a sports and culture company that he founded in 2016 and recently sold to Spotify, reportedly for almost $200 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSimmons appreciates the privilege of his position and now that he\u2019s his own boss\u2014able to give young writers the sort of break that ESPN gave him\u2014he\u2019s taking on a new challenge. With a series of gifts to universities, including the Simmons Family Scholarship at COM, he\u2019s begun funding graduate scholarships in hopes of building diversity in journalism and sports media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Voice of the Fan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n Simmons rose so quickly, while writing so prolifically in his casual tone, that he made it look easy. Behind the scenes, though, he had his doubts. After earning his master\u2019s at COM, he\u2019d covered high school sports for the Boston Herald<\/em>. \u201cI was looking at the landscape the whole time thinking, \u2018How do I get ahead?\u2019\u201d says Simmons, who split time between Brookline, Massachusetts, and Connecticut as a kid and graduated from the College of the Holy Cross. He left the Herald<\/em> in 1996, after three years, to bartend. \u201cAt that point, it seemed like the dream was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn December 2021, Bill Simmons published 14 episodes of The Bill Simmons Podcast<\/em> and four episodes of The Rewatchables<\/em>, which revisits popular films.vPhoto by Patrick Strattner for Boston University Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nLike any rabid Boston sports fan, he read the sports pages and listened to sports radio, and kept thinking there had to be space for a 20-something voice. \u201cEverybody who was writing about or talking about Boston sports was so old,\u201d he says. \u201cI put real thought into what I would want to read, what I would be jealous of if somebody else did it.\u201d AOL gave him space to experiment. He didn\u2019t write with the voice of a reporter inside the locker room\u2014\u201cI couldn\u2019t get press passes for anything,\u201d he says\u2014but of the fan ranting from a living room couch or the next bar stool over. \u201cI was young and angry. And I was able to push the envelope in a lot of different ways.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He debated sports movies. He rooted for, and vented about, the local teams. He roasted ESPN\u2019s annual awards gala, the ESPYS, with a running diary of the broadcast: \u201c8:03 \u2014 The show kicks off \u2026 8:04 \u2014 Just slammed my head against the coffee table for 30 seconds.\u201d Readers identified: \u201cThe Boston Sports Guy\u201d eventually averaged 10,000 daily visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBy 1999 I felt like this was something that wasn\u2019t just an outlet for me,\u201d he says. \u201cI went all-in on writing.\u201d Then came his big break: freelance assignments for ESPN. In 2001, he wrote an over-the-top piece about former Red Sox star-turned-nemesis Roger Clemens, \u201cIs Clemens the Antichrist?\u201d Simmons tore into one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. \u201cFans. He doesn\u2019t have any. \u2026 He\u2019s like Wolf in Pulp Fiction<\/em>\u2014no attachment to anyone or anything, a hired gun, a means to an end.\u201d By the end of the column, Clemens was \u201cDarth Vader with a Texas accent.\u201d ESPN hired Simmons later that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter a brief hiatus to write for Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/em>, Simmons returned to ESPN in 2004, just in time for the historic Red Sox World Series victory that elevated his Boston-centric columns to a national audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThen he really<\/em> got to work. Simmons followed that 2004 season with his first book, Now I Can Die in Peace<\/em> (ESPN, 2005), about the Red Sox, then another, The Book of Basketball<\/em> (ESPN, 2009), about the National Basketball Association. Both were best sellers. He tried producing; in 2007 he cocreated ESPN\u2019s Emmy-nominated 30 for 30<\/em> documentary series. He also began recording The B.S. Report<\/em> in 2007; by 2009 it was ESPN\u2019s most popular podcast, with more than one million downloads a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSimmons admits to a fear of stagnation. \u201cI made the decision that I didn\u2019t want to look back and think I\u2019d had the exact same year as the year before,\u201d he says. \u201cMy goal is to always keep moving, keep trying stuff.\u201d Whether it was because of his appeal to sports fans or his uncanny ability to navigate the shifting digital media landscape, his stuff kept succeeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSimmons is the most prominent sportswriter in America,\u201d the New York Times Magazine<\/em> declared in 2011\u2014and he had done it his way. \u201cSimmons makes no pretense of neutrality,\u201d Jonathan Mahler wrote. \u201cHe is the fan, the voice of the citizenry of sports nation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nGoing Big<\/h3>\n\n\n\n Shortly after the Times<\/em> profile, Simmons launched Grantland<\/em>, an ESPN-backed site focused on long-form journalism. For four years, they published a blend of stories that were uniquely Simmons, which is to say sports alongside\u2014and sometimes mixed with\u2014culture. Author Colson Whitehead covered the Summer Olympics. Critic Wesley Morris reviewed movies. Novelist Dave Eggers reflected on baseball and sports biographer Jane Leavy covered the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat ended in 2015. Simmons was suspended by ESPN after a podcast where he called the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, a liar. Then the network declined to renew his contract. Some might have sulked after losing such a lucrative, high-profile gig. Simmons pounced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within a few months, he had struck a deal with HBO to host a weekly talk show, Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons<\/em>, and develop future projects, while HBO would invest in his new media company: The Ringer<\/em>. While the show only aired for one season, Simmons\u2019 relationship with HBO continued. Andre the Giant<\/em>, which he produced, became HBO Sports\u2019 most watched sports documentary ever. Meanwhile, joined by his top editors from Grantland, Simmons began planning his next act.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Audio Era<\/h3>\n\n\n\n The Ringer<\/em> plays to its strengths. It doesn\u2019t exhaustively cover every inch of the sports world, like ESPN, and it\u2019s not publishing box scores, like the local paper. But the staff goes deep on the major sports and covers pop culture the same way. \u201cWe realized we should double down on all this stuff, like Marvel and Star Wars,\u201d Simmons says. \u201cLet\u2019s cover it like we cover the NBA.\u201d If your weekend starts with a Succession<\/em> binge and ends with Sunday Night Football<\/em>, The Ringer<\/em> is there for you, with previews, recaps, long-form stories and podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPodcasts are more fun to do than writing at this point. They are so intimate. You want to feel like you\u2019re hanging out with your friends.<\/p>Bill Simmons<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nAmid all of that, one byline is notably absent: Simmons hasn\u2019t published a column in four years. Writing on the internet has changed: Readers don\u2019t want thousands of words and writers are more reluctant to experiment, he says. \u201cI hate to be the old guy complaining about Twitter, but I think it\u2019s made people really self-conscious. People are afraid to take chances because they don\u2019t want the backlash.\u201d Reflecting on \u201cIs Clemens the Antichrist?,\u201d he says, \u201cNobody would write that now, and maybe that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Simmons has redirected his creative energy. \u201cPodcasts are more fun to do than writing at this point,\u201d he says. \u201cThey are so intimate. You want to feel like you\u2019re hanging out with your friends.\u201d Sound familiar? It\u2019s the same formula that attracted readers to his early columns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Simmons is making the most of this moment. Since the Spotify sale, The Ringer<\/em> has reportedly doubled its podcast output and increased the staff by 25 percent. In December, Simmons alone published 14 episodes of The Bill Simmons Podcast<\/em> and four episodes of The Rewatchables<\/em>, which revisits popular films. The Ringer\u2019s podcast network now includes 50 titles covering a wide range of topics, including cooking, Black culture and current events alongside lighter fare, like fantasy football, wrestling and reality TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMaking Diversity the Most Important Thing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n Like many people, Simmons has been reflecting on his role in promoting diversity, both at The Ringer and more broadly across the industry. In June 2020, he addressed the topic on his podcast. \u201cIt\u2019s like football,\u201d he said to his listeners. \u201cYou judge a coach by your record. You judge me by my record, and my record wasn\u2019t good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can say [diversity] is one of the many things you care about, but sometimes you have to make it the most important thing you care about.<\/p>Bill Simmons<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nSimmons knew he wanted to establish a foundation after the Spotify sale but wasn\u2019t sure how to focus it. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I spoke to my friend J. A. Adande\u2019s sports journalism class at Northwestern that fall that I came up with the idea,\u201d he says. \u201cWe did a Zoom and the lack of diversity in the class was pretty jarring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That experience inspired a series of gifts. At COM, the Simmons Family Scholarship is intended to provide tuition for four alumni of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) pursuing master\u2019s degrees in journalism; a similar gift to Northwestern\u2019s Medill School will provide scholarships in the sports journalism master\u2019s program. Simmons also donated to the Earl Monroe New Renaissance Basketball School, a charter high school in the Bronx, and is planning additional gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can say [diversity] is one of the many things you care about, but sometimes you have to make it the most important thing you care about,\u201d Simmons says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simmons recognizes his privilege. He remembers a COM professor in a narrative nonfiction course, Mark Kramer. \u201cHe rocked my world. The stuff I learned in that class I\u2019ve thought about for the rest of my career,\u201d he says. \u201cCould that happen to the people who get the scholarship, where they meet somebody like that and it changes the trajectory of their life? I think that would be pretty cool.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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