Grantland editor and ESPN commentator Bill Simmons had some choice words Roger Goodell on his B.S. Report podcast Monday, and he’s daring his employer to call him out for speaking his mind.
Simmons, who has been critical of the way Goodell has handled recent domestic violence cases, was still irate after the commissioner’s news conference last Friday and called him a liar for claiming to not have seen the second tape of Ray Rice assaulting his wife in a casino elevator.
“I just think that not enough is being made of the fact that they knew about the tape and they knew what was on it,” Simmons said. “Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. I’m just saying it. He is lying. I think that dude 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 f—–g bull—-. It really is — it’s such f—–g bull—-. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted. I really was.”
“This is the thing – when you’re the leader, you’re in charge and that’s it. And you take accountability. People work for you and ultimately they represent you, and if you screwed up as an institution in some way, take accountability for it.
“The best point that a lot of people have made about this is that this is exactly why he fined and suspended Sean Payton for a season,” Goodell continued. “Sean Payton was like, ‘I didn’t know.’ (Goodell’s) like, ‘Well, ignorance is not a whatever,’ and suspended him for a year. This is the same exact situation, and it’s worse because he knew. And he’s a liar.
Simmons turned his latest Grantland mailbag into the “HOW THE HELL DOES ROGER GOODELL STILL HAVE A JOB?” mailbag (the all caps are his), and in his Sept. 4 column looking ahead to the start of season, he ripped Goodell for his botched calls over the years. The league’s supposed denial of a concussion issue, the 2012 referee strike, Bountygate, Jim Irsay’s controversial suspension, the string of domestic violence cases – Simmons called the commissioner out on all of it.
“I think Rice, listen, the Ravens released him so it doesn’t matter. But he has because if he went in there and he told Goodell exactly what happened in the tape, and Goodell or somebody who worked for him had seen the tape, and Goodell’s reaction was, ‘You are suspended for two games,’ you can then no longer go back and change that suspension.
“Ray Rice isn’t playing football this year. It doesn’t matter. But Goodell looked at all the evidence and he said two games. That was his decision. He had all the evidence. There was nothing he didn’t know.”
Simmons ended the rant by essentially daring his employer to punish him for his take no Goodell. ESPN, which has a multibillion contract with the NFL, hours after Goodell’s news conference Friday, claiming the Ravens’ executives knew the scope of the Rice case long ago and tried to influence Goodell and New Jersey prosecutors to be lenient on Rice, while also trying to bribe Rice into keeping the details of the case under wraps. Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti in news conference Monday and blamed Rice’s camp for “manufacturing” the piece.
“I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell,” Simmons said. “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. Thank you.”
So far, it seems ESPN has done as he asked and left him alone.
UPDATED, 5:30 p.m. Sept. 24: We spoke to soon. ESPN released this statement Wednesday:,/p>
“Every employee must be accountable to ESPN and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN’s journalistic standards. We have worked hard to ensure that our recent NFL coverage has met that criteria. Bill Simmons did not meet those obligations in a recent podcast, and as a result we have suspended him for three weeks.”
