Bill's Guide to Gambling (alternate title: How to Lose Money By Being Stupid), Part 2

[SIMILAR DISCLAIMER TO THE ONE I INCLUDED BEFORE PART 1 OF THIS SERIES, BUT SLIMMED DOWN A LITTLE: I'm about to write about NFL gambling, and criticize Bill heavily for his gambling analysis and picks. However, I understand that like Bill, I am terrible at NFL gambling, and I would never tell anyone that I had some kind of a system that was going to help me win this season or ever. Now that I have that out of the way again, let's begin.]

These ahhh dahhhk, dahhhk times for one Mistah Simmons.  DAHHHK.  The Red Sox have now gone one seasons without winning a World Series (FIRE FARRELL!), the Celtics are going to be shitty again this year (silver lining: their division will be super shitty right along with them), and now the GREATRIOTS are finally in the process of falling apart after more than a decade as a good-to-great team.  Turns out you can't just trade a pro bowl offensive lineman for peanuts and still give your aging QB enough time to go through his reads.  Anyways, to top it all off, now he's suspended  by his employer which means he can't shine light upon the world by giving it his weekly picks.  But since Grantland's readers want a picks column anyways, starting last week (and hopefully continuing indefinitely, even after Simmons gets back), that responsibility fell to Bill Barnwell.  You know, the guy who writes about football at Grantland who actually can analyze his way out of a wet paper bag if he has to.

I've heard complaints that he's a little Simmonsy in his own right, specifically in that he oversimplifies things.  That may be fair.  But here's an important counterpoint: at least he's not a goddamn moron.  How'd he do with the picks?  Oh, ho hum, just 8-4.  Small sample size of course, but let's see how the next two weeks unfold.  I'm going to guess that taking Barnwell's advice over the course of a full season would end up saving you a lot of cash versus taking Simmons's.  But hey, even though Simmons is a dipshit of galactic proportions, he's a hardworking dipshit.  Let's run through the rest of his gambling rules, and see how they played out during weeks 1 through 3.

Rule: As always, be superduperduperduper careful of the Obvious Pick.

What the Christ does this even mean?  This means nothing.  This is a post hoc face-saving device you bring up when the dust has settled and you just lost $500 in a weekend.  "Should have TOTALLY been aware of the possibility that the Bucs wouldn't just cover in Pittsburgh, but could actually win outright.  So dumb to put the Steelers in all my parlays.  That was a total Obvious Pick.  Can't believe I missed it."  (Barnwell got that game right, by the by.)

Whether it’s some allegedly hot team coming off a big win, the team that just looked awesome on Sunday or Monday night, the team that every “expert” is picking on Thursday and Friday, the most obvious candidate for your Eliminator Pool (like Chicago at home against Buffalo this week), 

Lulz.  Indeed, Buffalo did go into Chicago and beat the Bears.  Simmons, of course, picked this game incorrectly because of course he did.  BILL!  YOU DIDN'T WATCH OUT FOR THE OBVIOUS PICK!  

or the team that’s getting picked 85 percent of the time on ESPN’s Pigskin Pick’em. Every week — repeat: EVERY WEEK — there’s always one Obvious Pick. Just be careful.

"Here's a rule that you don't necessarily have to follow, but you should be aware of it, perhaps even to the point of being careful about it.  But it's not a RULE rule.  Just a suggestion.  You're welcome."

Games so far this year that implicated this rule, which, of course, requires subjective decisions related to what an "obvious pick" is; I'm basing it on discussions I had with a couple of friends who love sports gambling (we'll call them J-Bug and House) during the days leading up to these weekends.  Feel free to disagree with the our consensus picks (at the time) for "obvious" games, and then go fuck yourself if it's a big deal to you.  Unless otherwise noted, home team was the "obvious" pick:

Week 1

BUF at CHI (Bill went against the rule and lost)

CLE at PIT (Bill went with the rule and won)

Week 2

ARI at NYG (ARI was the obvious pick after the Giants looked like a college team in week 1; Bill went with the rule and lost as the Giants looked like a college team again in this game)

NE at MIN (NE was the obvious pick; Bill went against the rule and won)

Week 3

TB at ATL (Bill went against the rule and won)

DEN at SEA (Bill went against the rule and won)

Verdict on this rule: the obvious games are obvious because they tend to be pretty easy to pick.  Then 5 or 6 times a season you get an upset in one of them, and tardburgers like Bill turn it into a gambling rule OMG DON'T TRUST THAT OBVIOUS GAME IT'S JUST A LITTLE TOO OBVIOUS DON'T YOU THINK???????

Rule: Always take a beat when you’re just blindly checking off games to ask yourself, “Wait, are we sure … ?”

Almost as helpful as the last rule. "When you are going to put real money that you have worked hard to earn or steal down on a game, don't just blindly 'check off' games, whatever that means, because that would be fucking stupid.  However, in the event that you find yourself blindly checking off games, go back through when you're done and then actually think about the games and re-make your picks as necessary."  Seriously, fuck this guy.

Like the Jets laying five to Oakland in Jersey this week. 

I know this was written before week 1, when we knew a lot less about all the teams in the league, but the Raiders have been terrible for a decade, lost 6 straight to finish out 2013, and were starting a rookie QB who played in a non-power conference in college.  I don't care how bad Geno Smith is, the Jets were the smart pick here, even though they did not cover.  The fact that Bill was able to talk himself into taking the Raiders, who needed all 6 of the points they were getting in order to cover, is a blind squirrel finding a nut.

When your brain is turned off, you lay the points, right? 

No, when your brain is turned off, you go to sleep, or at least stop gambling.

Who the hell would take Derek Carr and the Raiders on the road? 

Most people would agree (although Carr would then go on to cover against New England in Foxboro... maybe I'm the idiot).

But turn your brain on for a second … should that crappy Jets team be favored by five against ANYONE? 

Well, they were a fuckload better than the Raiders in 2013, and didn't have any really significant offseason losses.  They were beaten by a TEXTBOOK FAWKIN' BACKDO-AH COVAH in this game, leading by 12 inside the 2 minute warning when Carr hit James Jones for a 30 yard TD with the Raiders out of timeouts.  So yeah, I think the Jets should have been favored by 5.  (In Bill's defense, the Jets have looked horrible since and are now 1-3 overall and 1-3 against the spread.  But the Raiders are probably significantly worse.  NFL ACTION ACTION ACTION.)

Does home-field advantage matter when you’re getting booed because you’re down 17-0 in the second quarter and it looks like Tom Cruise could start at cornerback for you? Why are the Jets such an easy pick there?

I don't think they were THAT easy; me and J-Hench and Jimmy Kimmel didn't think this was an "obvious" game.  Anyways, I can't even analyze this rule because it's not a rule at all.  "Always wear your seatbelt" is a rule.  "When you're driving down the freeway at 90 mph and then you realize you're hallucinating and can't see straight, stop immediately" is just common sense.  This is more like the latter of those.

Rule: Make a plan for double-digit spreads and stick with it.

This might be the best one on the whole list.

Picking double-digit spreads is like having a 12 against a two in blackjack — there’s no right answer, but you’re better off doing the same thing every time. 

HAHAHAHA NO IT'S NOT, YOU FUCKING DOLT!  Here's how Bill came up with this: he likes gambling on football.  He thinks he's good at it.  He likes blackjack.  He thinks he's good at it.  THEY MUST HAVE SIMILARITIES!  HOW COULD THEY NOT???  WHO SAYS NO??????  I don't have time to aggregate all the data over a long period of time, but I'd be willing to bet a shiny nickel that over the long run, double digit favorites cover at very close to 50%.  That means that if "there's no right answer" and you decide to always bet for or against them, SURPRISE, you will lose money due to the house vig.  This is like saying "Picking home teams is like 12 against 2 in blackjack--just do the same thing every time" because home teams in the long run cover about 50% of the time.  If you are the kind of person who does things like this, you will lose money, because you are stupid.  Don't be stupid.

In 2014, I plan on grabbing the points unless it’s a breathtaking scenario along the lines of “The Seahawks just lost last week, they’re pissed off, and now Carson Palmer is coming to Seattle and he’s starting even though he might have a torn rotator cuff.”

I like how much he shits all over Arizona and Palmer in this article.  Watch them go 11-5 and make the conference championship game.  OTHER THAN THE SEAHAWKS NAME ONE NFC TEAM BETTER THAN THE CARDINALS.  YOU CAN'T.  

Verdict on this rule: So far this season there have only been 5 double digit spreads; favorites are 2-3 against them (PHI and SD covered against JAX; DEN, NO and NE failed to cover against KC, MIN and OAK).  Bill didn't get to pick the SD/JAX game because it happened last weekend.  In the other 4, he went 2-2 even though the underdogs went 3-1 against the spread.  Why?  Because he took all the underdogs except the Pats against the Raiders, of course.  I mean, Christ, what do you expect out of the guy?  You want him to control his impulses?  He's got the analytical skills of a 14 year old.  Of course he went against his rule once the FOOTBALL RED SOX were involved.  BUT I MEAN LOOK AT THIS PATRIOTS TEAM; SHOULD THEY BE LAYING 14 POINTS TO ANYONE????????  Jesus, I'm not sure they should be laying 4 points to anyone.

Rule: Beware of obvious choices and not-totally-reliable candidates for two-team and three-team teasers.

You should approach every tease with this mind-set: I would feel totally comfortable betting my life on this if it wouldn’t be so bizarre to bet your life on a two-team football tease. I already broke this rule in Week 1 when I teased Seattle -6 (already covered) with Chicago -7.5 at home against Buffalo (looks sooooooooo easy on paper and I did it anyway). When Jay Cutler limps out of the game in the second quarter, blame me. It’s my fault.

Holy Jumping Jesus on a Trampoline, we don't even need to go over this one.  It's just a restatement of that one "rule" we discussed 2 minutes ago that basically amounts to "try to make smart bets," but applied to parlays.  And then, naturally, he was right about the fact that he made a dumb bet in the CHI/BUF game, because even when he's right, he's wrong.  It must be excruciating to be Bill Simmons.  Actually, scratch that--it WOULD be excruciating to be Bill Simmons IF you had even a shred of self awareness.

Rule: When in doubt, always grab an underdog at home.

I love the wishy-washing of "when in doubt."  You know, if you've been blindly throwing money at your bookie or at the sports book dealer without any idea of who you are or where you are, that's a good time to start doubting yourself and asking "Wait... are you sure?"  At that point, if you are not sure, take home underdogs, BUT ONLY IF IT'S NOT A SUPER OBVIOUS PICK.

During a typical gambling season, home dogs will cover somewhere around 58-60 percent of the time. But during the Great Gambling Train Wreck of 2013? Home dogs started out hot as always (17-11 over the first five weeks), then free-fell into a fiery hell (25-34-2 over the next 12 weeks). Again, we have a solid amount of evidence that 2014 might be the Year of the Dog. 

Good use of "evidence."  To quote Simpsons superlawyer Lionel Hutz, "Well, Your Honor, we have hearsay and conjecture.  Those are KINDS of evidence."  To Bill, seeing that sometimes gambling trends repeat themselves, but sometimes they don't, is a kind of evidence.  WHO SAYS NO.

I don’t need to spell this out for you.

Yeah you IDIOTS.  Just follow Bill's rules already.  You losers.

Games so far this year that implicated this rule:

Week 1

NO at ATL (Bill went against the home dog and lost)

NE at MIA (Bill went against the home dog and lost)

SF at DAL (Bill went against the home dog and won)

Week 2

SEA at SD (Bill went with the home dog and won)

HOU at OAK (Bill went with the home dog and lost)

NE at MIN (Bill went against the home dog and won)

ARI at NYG (Bill went with the home dog and lost)

NO at CLE (Bill went with the home dog and won)

Week 3

IND at JAX (Bill went with the home dog and lost)

HOU at NYG (Bill went against the home dog and lost)

DAL at STL (Bill went with the home dog and lost)

SF at ARI (Bill went with the home dog and won)

Week 4

GB at CHI (home dog did not cover)

DET at NYJ (home dog did not cover)

ATL at MIN (home dog covered and won outright)

NO at DAL (home dog covered and won outright)

NE at KC (home dog covered and won outright)

Let's total it up.  Overall, home dogs are 9-8 against the spread.  Better than nothin'.  (In fact all 9 won outright, so you could have picked up some decent coin by playing all home dog money lines so far this year.)  Bill didn't pick the week 4 games, of course.  In the games he did pick, the home dogs went 6-6.  However, he only picked the home dog 7 out of those 12 games, and went 3-4.  And because he's a dillweed, he also went 2-3 when he went with the road favorite, making him 5-7 overall in home dog games.  I propose a new rule: if the road team is favored, just don't bet at all (if your name is Bill Simmons).

Verdict on this rule: Might be worthwhile if you stick with it.  And I guess play the home dog money lines rather than taking the points?  I don't know.  Don't listen to me.  I have no fucking clue what I'm doing.

Rule: Make a list of teams you irrationally like and dislike before the season starts, then stick to your guns those first five weeks.

HAHAHAHA.  Also a good rule, because it gives him a chance to talk about how smart he has been for years now.  (Also, "irrationally like" is a SECRETLY UNDERRATED Simmonsism.)

I broke that strategy down in 2004’s award-winning “Simbotics” seminar— 

A link to one of his columns from back then was here, but I removed it, because it was self-indulgent and dreadful (as his columns tend to be).  

for instance, I love San Diego as 2014’s surprise 12-win contender, 

The Chargers look pretty good.  They're 3-1 overall and 4-0 against the spread.  Naturally, since Bill is dumb, he did not pick them to cover in Buffalo during week 3, so he only went 2-1 in their games.

Tampa Bay as 2014’s “Nobody Believes In Us” sleeper, 

Tampa Bay looks pretty awful, although they did beat the mediocre Steelers in Pittsburgh, so that's fun.  They are now 1-3 overall and 1-3 against the spread.  Here's what Bill had to say about their week 1 matchup with Carolina:

BUCS (-3) over Panthers
My dream Week 1 matchup: my favorite still-undervalued team playing at home against 2014’s no. 1 regression candidate. Actually, this game is like a hot blackjack table. Just shut up. Don’t celebrate, don’t brag, don’t count your chips, don’t taunt the pit boss, don’t say anything.

MORE BLACKJACK ANALOGIES PLEASE!  Panthers 20, Bucs 14.  And the Panthers now look absolutely atrocious.  To Bill's credit, he did stick to his guns and pick the Bucs to beat the Rams in week 2 (oops).  Also to his credit, he then wised up and took the Falcons to beat them in week 3.  What happened to sticking to your guns?  Hey, like Jack Handy says, I'd rather be lucky than stupid.

Baltimore as 2014’s comeback team, 

The Ravens are 3-1, although 3 of those games have been at home and the only good team they played (Cincy) beat them at home.  Still, they are also 3-1 against the spread.  Bill went 3-0 in their games, picking against them in the Cincy game.

Cincy as 2014’s Slightly Undervalued Contender, 

Cincy looks really, really good.  They are 3-0, and 3-0 against the spread.  Of course, Bill took the Falcons to cover against them in Cincy in week 2, saying he was grabbing the 5 points "only because of the overwhelming Garbage Time Touchdown Potential."  Atlanta did score a garbage time touchdown; unfortunately they were down 21 at the time.  STICK TO YOUR GUNS FOR FIVE WEEKS BILL YOU SILLY MAN.

and Minnesota as 2014’s super-frisky non-playoff team. 

The Vikings are a tough team to judge, since they've lost Peterson but gained a QB who is way way better than Matt Cassel in the last couple of weeks.  They are now 2-2 overall and against the spread.  They're not winning that division, but I suppose they do qualify as "frisky," so good for Bill.  

I’m also waaaaaaaaay down on Carolina 

Carolina looks awful.

and Kansas City; 

The Chiefs are now 2-2 overall but 3-1 against the spread; they just finished shoving the Patriots' heads up their own asses on national TV.  Man, why did Bill have to get suspended last week?  I really wish I could go read his pick for that game right now, just to make me smile.  YOU THINK BILLY B IS GOING TO LET ANDY REID WIN THIS GAME?  STAWP.  JUST STAWP.

I think the Falcons, Cardinals and Jets are worse than people think; 

And yet you took the Falcons against the Bengals in Cincy.  Also, we went over this, but the Cardinals are good.

I’m petrified of the QB situations in Buffalo, Houston and Washington; 

If you have a pulse and a passing interest in the NFL, you knew those QB situations were unstable back in June.

and I’m worried that San Francisco might have a Year From Hell Season. 

I'll give him a speck of credit here, they have looked ready to melt down a couple of times.

Throughout September, I am sticking to my guns — that’s how I feel, so that’s how I am picking games with those teams.

No, you're not.  You dummy.

Next: DEFINITIVE PROOF that CANNOT BE DENIED that this REALLY REALLY ACTUALLY is the YEAR OF THE DOG. (Note: dogs went 4-7-1 last week, bringing them to 31-27 on the year.  It is not the year of the dog.)

Some jackass wrote a puff piece about Simmons for Rolling Stone, and it's horrible (part 4 of 4)

Quick update before I get going: the NBA draft lottery was tonight, and the Celtics moved down one spot from 5th to 6th.  Bill was on the NBA Countdown set and had to comment on what the ping pong balls did (including giving the Cavs the #1 overall pick for the third time in four years, to which he said "The system is broken and we need a new one;" IT'S NAWT FAY-UH!!!!) just minutes after the coverage of the lottery ended.  It was wonderful.  It was beautiful.  At this point, we can just skip ahead to next Monday.  My week is already made.

Whew.  This article has been exhausting.  What's next?

No sportswriter has ever had as much success as Simmons, 

Perhaps true, although not in the way you want it to be true--Simmons is not a sportswriter.  I will agree, however, that he is richer and possibly more well-known than any sportswriter ever.  If money and exposure are your criteria for success, sure.  But I don't know why we're comparing him to Hunter S. Thompson and Grantland Rice (who did not suck, regardless of what some twat at Deadspin has to say about it) or Joe Posnanski before he went full retard for JoePa a few years ago.  Those guys don't practice the same trade as Bill.

partly because sports is now inseparable from pop culture. 

That is not true, and is something only a dipshit Simmons fanboy would say.

Even if you don't care about football, you know Peyton Manning from his ads for Buick. Or DirecTV. Or Gatorade. 

Yes, it's true.  Prior to Peyton Manning, no athlete has ever endorsed a product or crossed over into the entertainment business.  He's the first guy ever.  Other than OJ, or Bruce Jenner (I'm referring to CHiPs, not his reality work), or Alex Karras, or Kareem, or Shaq, or any of the dozens of others who have acted, not to mention the thousands of others who have pitched products.  Nope.  It's a 21st century phenomenon for sure.

By integrating with television, digital media, and Madison Avenue, sports has shifted from a pastime to a conglomerate: according to Forbes, the four major professional leagues are worth a combined $91.2 billion. 

This has nothing to do with "sports [being] now inseparable from pop culture."  This is because of cable, and more recently TiVo/DVR, which have caused sports TV contracts to go through the roof.  Sports are more commercialized now than they were 25 or 50 or 75 years ago, but that's true with most things in America.  The real reason for the explosion in franchise values and player contracts is TV money, and the reason for the TV money explosion is accessibility and the fact that most people watch sports live.  Don't be fucking dense.

This makes it harder to care about sports — who roots for Comcast, or Chevron? — 

What the fuck are you talking about?  It's harder to get excited about sports because the teams and players have more money?  

but the enthusiasm of Simmons' columns and podcasts return fans to the spirit of the pre-show-me-the-money era.

That could not be further from the truth.  Unless he's discussing a Boston team, Simmons doesn't write or speak about sports, not in the way a sports fan does.  I don't need to return to the pre-Jerry Maguire era.  I'm just old enough to remember what it was like.  It sucked, relative to today's world of sports, where I can watch my team on my phone from anywhere I have a signal.  I could care less how much money is involved.  Sports are fun because they are sports, not because aw shucks these fellas are just like regular guys!  They work in factories in the offseason!  Sports in 2014 kicks the shit out of sports in 1964.  Sorry, old people.

ESPN has both enabled this growth and benefitted from it, and is now worth $50.8 billion, making it the most valuable media brand in the world, according to Forbes, with 7 domestic and 24 international TV networks, radio networks, a weekly magazine and websites. That's a staggering sum for a network that launched in 1979 with a lineup of college soccer, wrestling, and slow-pitch softball.

Look, I'm the first person to admit that Bill has been very successful, but ESPN's meteoric rise, especially during the last ten years, is about 0.1% due to him.  Let's not trip over our dicks trying to give him credit.  In any case, speaking of the early days of ESPN, read Those Guys Have All the Fun (or at least first 300 or so pages) at some point.  Pretty interesting how it all came together, and sad/predictable that the guy who founded it got fucked out of all his potential money by scummy investors.  (To his credit, he's not mad about it.  Seems like a free-spirited kind of guy.)

Tony Kornheiser, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his sportswriting, 

Tony Kornheiser, a contrarian know-nothing piece of smug human garbage, has somehow almost won a Pulitzer.  That might be even more flabbergasting than Rick Reilly's 15 AP Sportswriter of the Year awards or whatever the fuck he has.

and a host of ESPN's lively Pardon the Interruption, calls this "a Golden Age for sportswriters," though not a Golden Age for sportswriting. 

"Those damn bloggers and their hippity hop music why back in my day only REAL sportswriters were allowed to make up bullshit and pass it off as presentable content blah blah blah condescend condescend condescend"

In spite of all these opportunities — or maybe because of them — sportswriters have never seemed more unhappy. They bicker like Real World cast members, and beef like gangsta rappers in the Nineties. 

Sweet analogies, diddley-dawg.

And Simmons is often in the middle of these tiffs, partly because people only beef up, and partly because Simmons' name guarantees website traffic, especially if he replies.

Simmons is a thin-skinned baby who is incapable of letting anything roll off his back.  He's a fool.  I'm glad he doesn't "beef" more often, because watching his sycophants defend him is the only thing more painful than reading his writing.

Deadspin is to mocking Simmons what Michael Jordan is to basketball, 

Huh?  How often do they pick on him these days?  Deadspin is the Michael Jordan of a lot of things--you might be able to say they're that good at antagonizing sportswriters in general--but I'm pretty sure Simmons isn't exactly high on their list.

so I asked Tommy Craggs, the site's editor, to summarize the case against him. Craggs denounced Simmons' "chuckling, incurious, cleverest-guy-standing-around-the-Phi-Delt-keg writing voice," and dismissed him as "nothing more than a dispenser of dull, honkified conventional wisdom about sports." He also said Simmons had been smart in not hiring Bill-Jr. clones at Grantland, adding that a site full of Simmons-ish prose "would suck."

Craggs is kind of a turd, but I can pretty much co-sign everything said there.

What is it with these guys? They're nearly as bad as Sports Twitter. Charles Pierce of Esquire wrote a snarlish review of Simmons' Book of Basketball (on Deadspin, of course), mocking his frequent digressions into gambling, movies, his friends, and strip clubs, and concluding with the words, "Get the fuck over yourself." This lead to an angry exchange of emails and posts, during which Pierce called Simmons a "mendacious, whiny little thin-skinned bag of breeze." Several months later, Simmons hired Pierce as a staff writer, so presumably, all has been forgiven. Also: Tommy Craggs, Simmons' chief tormenter, was set to take a job at Grantland in 2011, before he shit-talked an ESPN.com writer and the new job fell apart. Why do even Simmons' most severe critics want to work with him?

First of all, let's get a source on that last part.  Could be true but I've never heard it before.  Second of all, I love the idea that because someone thinks Simmons is a dunce (or that ESPN sucks in general), they should never take at Grantland (or ESPN), which comes with what is almost certainly higher pay and an unquestionably awesome support network/platform.  Old media is dying--short of Sports Illustrated, I can't think of a print journalism sportswriting job that sounds glamorous.  If you're going to get a new media job, why not swing with the big boys?  I don't begrudge anyone who does that.  "IF U NO LIKE HIM DEN HOW COME U WANT TO BEE HIM LOL" is the argument of a mouth breather.

For an impartial opinion, I asked a younger journalist who works for one of ESPN's competitors if he thought Simmons is a good writer. "As far as craft? No. His pieces are too long, there's too much I in them, and he goes on too many tangents. 

All true.  Also, he has nothing interesting to say and a 9th grade vocabulary.

But he's very smart, 

Well, we can write whoever this person is off as an idiot themselves.

he's wittier than all the people who imitate him, 

Lulz

and he has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the NBA. 

And that's what you're looking for in a sportswriter with a huge national profile--no knowledge about most sports, and a lot of knowledge about one sport, which is projected through so many layers of fuckass whining/preening homerism that it's barely even worth reading.

The Internet made Bill Simmons, and it also produced all the people who like to tear him down. 

OH THE CRUEL CRUEL IRONING!  POOR BILL!  CAN'T THE GUY CATCH A BREAK????

That's the thing about the Internet — it makes its own gravy, over and over again."

Yeah, whoever this anonymous source is, they're a fucking moron.

Once Simmons got an ESPN assignment, he quickly found an audience. But just as immediately, his relationship with the Worldwide Leader in Sports was full of conflict. "ESPN was idiotic," says Simmons, who can match any athlete for self-confidence. 

Douchechills.

"They fucked with my column for the first year, taking out jokes, and I was pissed off. 

Douchechills, douchechills, douchechills.

They were rebuilding their site around me, 

No.  No they were not.  Not even years and years later, when you had enough clout to get Grantland and the budget that comes along with it, was the country's #1 sports media company building anything around you.  Get over yourself, you pathetic horse's ass.

but they were paying me nothing. So I had a meltdown: I didn't turn in a column. I was like, 'Attica! Attica!' " He laughs. "I was probably smoking too much pot."

WHOA!  PRETTY EXTREME, DUDE!  CAN'T WAIT UNTIL YOU TURN 16 AND GET YOUR DRIVER'S LICENSE, YOU'LL BE A REAL REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE!

ESPN rewarded his work strike with a raise. "Bill likes to be in control," an insider says. 

This insider's name: Sill Bimmons.

"In the early days, he was very upset about where they placed his column, versus where other columnists were. He's a great advocate for himself and his brand."

Ah shit, OK, it was Darren Rovell.  I should have guessed.  Man that guy is a dickhead.  I hope he gets fired soon.

It wasn't Simmons' last fight with his bosses. They've suspended him from Twitter twice for tweets: for referring to Boston sports-radio hosts who worked for an ESPN affiliate as "deceitful scumbags," 

Captain tinydick strikes again.  Not that WEEI DJs are probably any less horrible.

and also for saying an interview that aired on ESPN was "awful and embarrassing." Does he think they were right to suspend him? "No, I don't."

/"tiniest violin in the world" finger rubbing motion

ESPN is owned by the Walt Disney Company, and some of Simmons' behavior — like, say, calling soccer "gay" or mocking people for being fat — makes him a far more troublesome employee than Mickey Mouse. 

The author of this piece is somehow a more worthless writer than Simmons himself.  Jesus that's bad.

Periodically, the two parties get annoyed at one another. ESPN president John Skipper once said working with Simmons was "about 99.8 percent great." ("Working with ESPN is 99.1 percent great," Simmons counters.) 

Zing?  What?

Convincing the network to do 30 For 30 required "a year of arm-twisting," he says. When it was a success, and his basketball book had been a big hit, his contract was up for renewal. "I had a little leverage." He told ESPN that he wanted his own site, or he'd leave and do it elsewhere.

Spoken with all the cunning and accomplishment of a man born on third base who believes he hit a triple.

Grantland's success, like Simmons', has resulted from good fortune as well as talent. Since 2002, Boston teams have dominated pro sports, tallying eight titles in twelve calendar years, including baseball, basketball, hockey, and football. No other city has ever had that kind of success, and it brought a lot of attention to Simmons. No wonder he loves Tom Brady so much.

What?  1) Grantland launched in 2011--Boston has won two championships since, and one happened like a week after the launch--it's not like it's been around since the days of NOMAHHHHH; but more importantly, 2) Grantland has nothing to do with Boston in the first place, other than being affiliated with Simmons.  What the fuck is going on in that paragraph?  Can anyone parse it for me?

"When we were launching, we didn't realize technology advances would help us so much." GIFs, Instapaper, wi-fi, embeddable links — all foster the ease of promoting a digital magazine. 

Again... 2011.  As in three years ago.  What the fuck are they talking about?  Wi-fi?  They started installing it on fucking airplanes three years ago.  Christ, it was available in subway tunnels like eight years ago.  It's been available in coffee shops and residences since the turn of the century.

"The iPad has been a godsend — it's probably the greatest thing that's' happened to Grantland. Nobody knew the fucking iPad was coming. I didn't. We hit at the right time."

I promise you, the iPad has about as much to do with the success of Grantland as Bill has to do with the rise of ESPN.  Christ, what a moron.

In a recent month, Grantland, according to comScore, had 4.7 million unique visitors, which represents just a sliver of ESPN's 62 million unique visitors 

YA DON'T SAY!  I could swear we were just talking about how Bill was ESPN and ESPN was Bill.

and pales compared to Yahoo Sports' 57.9 million. (Even Deadspin, the Johnny Lawrence to Simmons’ Daniel LaRusso, had 13.8 million.) 

But you can subtract 13.7 million of those, because secretly everyone who works there wants to be best friends with Bill!!!!!

But the site's balance sheet isn't the point. ESPN likely pays him more than $5 million a year, the insider estimates — not because of Grantland, but because Simmons is a guy with big ideas, a one-man vertical-integration engine.

Barf barf barf barf barf barf barf barf barf barf barf barf

Now that he oversees an empire, Simmons says he doesn't care as much about Boston teams. "It's not life-or-death anymore," he says with a shrug. 

Wrong.  Wrong.  Lies.  According to his ESPN co-anchors (who announced this live on the air tonight, so it's probably more good-natured ribbing that anything else, but I still believe there's real emotion behind it), when he saw that the Celtics didn't move up via the lottery tonight, he said "This is murder" or "This is torture."  (I forget which but it was one of the two.)  IT'S THE DRAFT LOTTERY, YOU DUNCE.  IT'S NOT EVEN THE DRAFT ITSELF.  FUCK YOU.

But that might not be true. His daughter loves L.A.'s hockey team, the Kings, so he took her to see them play his team, the Bruins. "Boston won, and I taunted her on the way home. 

Awesome.

She started crying. She was, like, six years old." A few years later, they went to another Kings-Bruins game, and this time her team won. "She was yelling and high-fiving everyone," Simmons says, "and she taunted me." Of course she did. It's in the bloodline.

What an uninspiring choice for an anecdote that's supposed to wrap up the whole article.  All I learned from it is that Bill is a asshole and his kids will probably grow up to be mean.  This has been uninformative to say the least.  Rolling Stone sucks ass and I hope it goes out of business soon.  Good night and God bless.  SMH.