Bill Simmons still hasn’t gotten over how ESPN handled Grantland. More than a decade after his departure from the network, the sports media personality is once again taking aim at his former employer. The outburst reflects a long-running dispute between the Ringer founder and ESPN, one that began before his departure in 2015.
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More than 11 years later, the dispute has found another flashpoint. This time, his anger centers on the decision to erase years of video content from the publication he built. Bill Simmons’ latest rant was prompted by a listener who lamented the loss of House Eats. It was a Grantland video series featuring Simmons’ longtime friend and collaborator Joe House.
“You can’t see it because a little after I left ESPN, for some reason, because they’re vindictive f—– s—head a——, they liquidated our Grantland YouTube channel,” Simmons said on the episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast. “I still can’t believe they did it. There’s four years of videos that we did, a lot of them were ahead of their time. They were just like ‘F— it, we’ll just liquidate all of it.’ So they can go eat a big fat d—.”
Bill Simmons launched Grantland in June 2011, building it into a destination for readers who wanted more than quick scores and standard game recaps. Named after legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice, the site blended long-form sports journalism with pop culture, film, television and social commentary. Its storytelling earned it a loyal audience. The website also expanded into video, producing content that complemented its written work. Its YouTube channel preserved four years of that programming, which Simmons now says has effectively disappeared.
That’s why he unleashed a profanity-filled tirade against ESPN over its decision to shut down Grantland’s YouTube channel. But the relationship between Bill Simmons and ESPN had already begun to deteriorate by the time Grantland disappeared.
In May 2015, ESPN president John Skipper announced that the network would not renew Simmons’ contract. The decision followed a turbulent period that included Simmons’ public criticism of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
ESPN even suspended Simmons after he called Goodell a liar over his handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case. Then the manner in which the split unfolded only added to the tension.
ESPN reportedly informed The New York Times about Bill Simmons’ contract status before he learned of the decision himself. He made his frustration clear after leaving. On October 2, 2015, he offered a blunt assessment of his former employer.
“I just think it is weird to work at a place that is trying to make you look bad,” Simmons said. “Usually places try not to make some of their best talent look bad. It’s usually not something a company does. So there was bad blood.”
Less than a month later, ESPN announced that Grantland would close on October 30, 2015. The decision stunned many readers who had come to appreciate its distinctive approach to sports and entertainment journalism. Bill Simmons called the shutdown “simply appalling.” Skipper defended the decision and insisted that his personal conflict with Simmons had not dictated Grantland’s fate.
“I made the decision,” Skipper said in an interview with Vanity Fair published in November 2015. “There was no influence from [ESPN corporate parent] Disney on this. And I made sure that I divorced my feelings about Bill [Simmons] from this decision because I would never let that affect the people who are there.”
The then-ESPN executive maintained that the decision was about weighing the resources required to sustain the publication against what it offered the network. “This was never a financial matter for us,” Skipper explained, describing Grantland’s benefits as “having a halo brand and being Bill Simmons related.”
That explanation did little to settle the dispute. Bill Simmons continued to criticize ESPN publicly, including after the network shut down his former publication, but Skipper fired back.
“Bill would rather spin conspiracy theories and be perceived as a martyr than take responsibility for his own actions,” Skipper said. He added that he had ended their professional relationship because of Simmons’ “repeated lack of respect for this company and, more importantly, the people who work here.”
Simmons has since built a successful media operation with The Ringer, which Spotify acquired in 2020. But that success has not erased his frustration over what happened to Grantland. And judging by his latest choice of words, he still has plenty to say about it.