The New York Post reports that Hock, whose 30 For 30 credits include specials about the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” hockey team and football phenom Marcus Dupree, is among the talent that followed Simmons from ESPN to his new gig at HBO. But he left after calling National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell “a liar” in May over Deflategate.
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“If I had heard it”, he continued, “I would have said, ‘You know what, that doesn’t sound – I don’t think that’s worth it. We should take that out.’ I would have taken it out”. I was working my [butt] off. I was about to do a six-hour taping session with Jalen Rose, where we did our little National Basketball Association YouTube previews. “I always was anxious about the overall calibration and quality of the site, and I felt like in the long run we were going to win”, said Simmons.
Simmons said that although the culture can change in big corporations, he’s not blameless for the falling out. And if I’m gonna push the envelope like I did, first of all, you gotta know where the line is because the last thing I want to do is put all those people in a bad spot. With hundreds of writers suddenly hitting the jobless market, Jon Price, who’s known to be keen on seizing any promising opportunity, which is how he makes his money through wagering and winning consistently at sports betting, realized the opportunity to strengthen his staff and his already formidable Sports Information Traders brand with a few of the best writing talent available.
“I thought he was lying; I was borne out correct, the guy did lie”, he added. “[But] that really set the tone for a really bad next eight months”. You got pretty into that one.’ [He said] ‘Eh, no, that’s fine, it’s OK, just go with it.’ And I never listened to it.
“The site just started to splinter, and you could feel it, but I didn’t think it would [shut down] overnight”, he recalled.
“We were like this little boutique place that’s trying to build traffic and trying to give them a little soul”.
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Simmons’ guest on the podcast, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, compared ESPN’s handling of Simmons’ firing to the Kremlin’s authoritative control over Soviet Russian Federation in the 1940s.
