YouSaid · the spoken record

Bill Simmons

lines on the record: 128
first: 2023-02-13
most recent: 2023-02-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, that was, which I was ready for in some ways because I watched Jimmy do it and I watched how we did the 30-30 stuff. I also really believed in what we were doing. And to me, it wasn't just a writing site. And I think as the years pass, I think people miss some of it what Grantlin was trying to do because like we had a podcast network before anyone did. We had a deal with YouTube. We built this little studio that we were cutting all these different videos that we were doing. We were doing March Madness pre-game shows live for my house. There was an energy to some of the stuff we were trying that I think we were trying to become a digital content epicenter for ESPN. We were trying to become this playground for them that they didn't have. And I feel like we did that.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bill Barnwell and Zach Lowe, and we had Katie Baker, you going down the line, we just had over and over again we're able to find really, really good, talented young people, Jonathan Abrams, et cetera, et cetera.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the big premises of Grantland was that we weren't going to do it that way. And I actually went back and I studied a lot of these different places. I put real thought into it. One of the mistakes that they made was, you know, they would blow really all their budget on like expensive writers who were in their primes or even a little past their primes. Know, if you look back at the people that succeeded for Grantlin, it was all people that for the most part were the up and comers. It was Rember Brown. It was J. Kang. We had Hua Su. We had”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who read my column, they're just as likely to care about the sopranos as they were would be about the NBA draft. I was like, there's got to be some sort of vortex for all this stuff. And I felt like page two at that point had really kind of missed it. Editorially, and some of the hires, like they just didn't crack the code. And I felt like I could. And I was really influenced by the national and inside sports specifically. Yeah. And Spy magazine And late 70s Rolling Stone. I feel like that's sitting there for somebody, and I want to do it. I want to do it with you guys. I want to create this place.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was like, I want to do this sports culture website. I feel like. From a writing standpoint, everybody's doing blogs, everybody's writing shorter stuff, and I feel like there's a zag that could be had here. I think there's a lot of good writers out there. Yeah. One of the things with me was, I always kind of knew who the other good writers are, the people that weren't getting enough of a chance because I'm competitive. So you look at people like, oh shit, that person's good. Watch out for them. And so sketched out this whole sports and pop culture site because I felt like everything was like you're a sports site. You're a basketball site. You're a movie site. You're a pop culture site. And I was like, you know what? Honestly, people.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and by the way, they're right. They should feel that way. Like, I'm working for those guys. They're paying me a salary and benefits and all this stuff. And I'm representing their company. And that was something I feel like from 09 on, there's like a six five year stretch there where I really felt like I loved working for that place. Know, I hate the Yankees, but they were like the Yankees. They were the best. And I wanted to be at the best place read by the most people.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you can't assume that the people of the higher ups know everything that's going on. And the best way is just to communicate with them. And a lot of people don't realize that. So anyway, we ironed all that out. In 2009 was like one of the best years I ever had for them.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They didn't, and that was a good lesson to me as a boss. Eventually, down the road was like you can't assume that the people that work for you.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I took that one really hard. And then there was some other stuff behind the scenes that I was getting frustrated by. They'd hired Rick Riley, and it was after they had signed me, and he made way more money than me. And I just couldn't believe it because I was more important to them than he was. It became a respect thing to me. And it all led to like, I told them, like, I'm taking eight weeks off and I'm going to work on my book. I was like ready to quit by the end of 2008, and we had this come to Jesus moment in the new LA Lie building they were meeting with me and Skipper and Walsh. And within five minutes, we figured everything out. And my issue was that. I just never had a real conversation with him about it. I was getting quietly frustrated thinking they knew what was going on. And they didn't.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seeming like they were biased one way or the other with Democrats, Republicans, whatever it was. And they were just like, well, you'd have to have equal time with the Republican thing. And I'm like, but that's not going to happen. Like, I have a chance to talk to Obama.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so spring of 2008, Obama was clearly headed to probably getting the Democratic nomination. And Obama's going to come on my podcast. And to me, it was like this would be the greatest thing that ever happened to my podcast I also thought it had a chance to be the first important podcast ever because nobody of any real substance had ever done a podcast. So I was like. This would be like a transformative moment for me, for podcasts, the whole thing. And ESPN squashed it. And they squashed it for reasons that.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Catalyst, and I'm not saying I was 100% great in all of this, and that there's some things that I think I could have been more mature about. The first real catalyst was when they canceled the Obama podcast.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I could feel like momentum with it I had so many things going on that I was like just thrilled about because I still had my calm, but I had 30 for 30. We were in the throes of that. And then I had the podcast. Then I had this basketball book that I was like, this is like my one chance to write this book.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whenever the Apple infrastructure kicked into place with the charts, I remember I was always one of the top three podcasts, but there really weren't a lot of podcasts. It was like me and Mark Marin and. Couple others, but the thing I wasn't prepared for was all of a sudden celebrities wanted to come on and that started like 09. Like I remember Seth Myers and I were emailing about the Steelers or something. He's like, yeah. I thought Jacko was so funny talking about. I'm like, you listen to the podcast. I was just stunned that people listened to it. He's like, yeah, come on anytime you want. I'm like, you will?”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'll have my buddy Jacko come on to talk about the Yankees versus the Red Sox. I'll have my buddy Jacoby come on to talk about the real world and the news season that's happening. It was a combo of that or like information stuff with people like Rick Bucher and Mark Stein.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the website, so I press play and something weird happened, then all of a sudden they were playing this show and it was, I think it was Chad Ford, talking to Danny Ange and Danny Inge talking about Boston in the draft. So listen to the whole thing, and I was like, I don't understand what that was. So that was, was that a show? Was that an interview in a locker room? But I kind of loved it. How do I get one of those? So I emailed the ESPN. I was like, whatever that podcast thing is, can I have one? And they're like, really? And I'm like, yeah. So they were like, all right, we'll send you some equipment. And then I started to think about, all right, what would I want to listen to? You know, I didn't know how to interview anybody. And what I wanted to listen to was not awkward interviews with people. I wanted to listen like chemistry.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that was part of the framework. Let's steal HBO's corner. So we started developing that. Like a month after, I saw I was on the website and they had this, it was like an NBA podcast.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it even went a little deeper than that. We had our anniversary coming up in 2009. I had the title, 30 for 30, and I was like, look, HBO owns the documentary space right now for sports. We're letting this happen.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Skippers renting content. He wasn't running all ASP pin yet. We went to the rosebow and then we talked outside his hotel. He had offered me a figure that was more money than I ever thought I'd make in my life. And yet I still felt like I was worth. 25% more. And I was like, look, I think I'm worth more, and here's why. And here's what I want to do going forward. Like, I want to start adding stuff. I feel like I can have a bigger impact on the company than just with the column. And he was like, I'm in. the first couple months i sent them the long memo about 30 for 30 and that was in this that was in the spring right around the same time with the podcast”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was really aware of this has a shelf life. People get tired of writers' voices. I'm going to run out of things to say at some point. I got to start adding stuff like what's next? What are the next iterations for me? And I'd been messing around with scripts and things like that. But I had, my contract was coming up the beginning of 07. And Yahoo is trying to get me.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was like, he's right. What am I complaining about? This is everything I ever wanted. So I wrote the piece that night.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had, I remember, I was pretty burned out because I was writing a lot and the games were late. There was one day where I just didn't feel like I had another piece of me. And this guy, John Papanek, who is the ESPIN.com editor at the time, we were talking about it. And I was like, I think I'm going to skip today. Like, I just got nothing left. Like I need a day off. And he's like, you can't take a day off. Everybody is reading these pieces every day. This is the biggest story in the world. You're all over the place, not only America but other countries. And he was like, isn't this what you always dreamed of? And the way he put it, it was like honestly one of the best speeches anyone ever given me.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the 04, I was kind of back to where I was three years before in Boston, but way better at knowing how I had to do stuff. And it was a really fun year. Like, I really felt like I went up a level as a writer and I was watching the Red Sox we're on all the time. And then the Red Sox turned out to be the famous team. And it was great. It was probably one of the two or three best moments of my career, like being able to write all the time during that journey and go into the ALCS games and Boston games four and five and being able to write about that that night, which I still was like probably my favorite piece I ever wrote”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, and you're just like, man, what did I do today? And ESPN.com was growing. And I had a chance to come back and be like the guy on the website. And I just felt like. I had refilled my batteries a little and I was just like, I got to give this one more chance.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I knew a little, but the recurring refrain from everybody was why would you give up that column? The number of guy at ESPN was one piece. And then the other thing was I really missed the column. And I really miss writing. It was the first time I just felt like I was doing a shitty job writing it. The Jimmy job was all in every day. And I felt like the writing was going to slip away. That was when it started to plant my head like, wait, did I make a mistake? And I worked for the chauffeur, I think, a year and a half. And there were nights where I'd get like one joke on”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd ever met, and all we were doing was just giving each other shit and making jokes and trying to figure out how to help Jimmy create this show from scratch. It was just the coolest experience. And I think for me, the issue was when I moved out to LA, I didn't realize that my column was kind of making the impact that it did, really until I moved to LA and all these different people were talking about it and people were trying to be, you know, my aging, all these different things.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I loved him. And I learned a lot. And working on a TV show, it was the only time other than working in a restaurant where you felt like you were really part of something. You know, writing is. I'd been on my own for five years at that point, just writing my own stuff, relying on myself, being by myself. And it was so great to be with other people. And really funny people. Like the funniest people other than maybe like two friends I had.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I went to a Laker game, I think like two weeks after I moved here. And it was eye-opening. And it was Kobe Shakta. It was the staples just. Humming on all cylinders. There were celebrities all over the place.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like writing scripts, working for a TV show. And as I felt like it wasn't sustainable the way I was doing it. I felt like a wrestler that is doing these crazy bumps every night. And it's like now I'm jumping from 20 feet instead of 15. Yeah. I was writing 10,000, 11,000 words a week, and it was unsustainable. Like, I really started to burn out. And Jimmy came along. I'd been in the East Coast my whole life. And I think my wife and I were just like, we were like, fuck it. Let's go. Let's do this. So I talked to ESPN. John Skipper was running the content side at that point. He wasn't running all ESPN yet. And he handled it so well and was so cool about it that I was loyal to him after that.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I felt like I was starting to worry about my column. I always felt like my column was a gateway to do something else. Never felt like it was sustainable in a real way. Something.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, or a coach X is terrible. But the other thing is I'm always trying to stand out. And I just want people to come back to Readme. And the only way they're going to keep coming back is if I'm unpredictable. It can't just be like, here are my top 20. Trades, it's like, what's the extra hook? What's the extra gimmick? So I would use pop culture for some of it. I used to do NFL preview of the season instead of just doing my preview. I would do quotes from dazed and confused and I would hand out the quotes to different things that I think would happen. And it was like all about that next layer of how can I get you to come back because you don't know what I'm doing next.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, here's one that I actually made. It's probably in archives. You can't win a title with Peyton Manning. Brady is Bill Russell, and Peyton Manning is World Chamberlain. He's going to put up these records, but he can't actually win.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but what's weird is that changed and I started getting access. I thought like when I got to ESPIN, I remember talking to John Walsh about this a couple times. And he's like, totally be critical, but be fair. Don't be mean. And don't say anything that you wouldn't feel if you ran into the person, basically. And I look back, the stuff in the first five years, I just think sports column writing was different. It was way more performative. It was a lot like political science, actually, where you argue a case.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I wake up in the morning and I watch fourth quarters of games that I didn't see because. I just feel like the moment you stop doing that, you should just quit.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt like I could outwork a lot of the people I was competing against, especially like I was watching Rick Riley at the time, Sports Illustrated, and he was an excellent writer. And he was just writing one column a week. And you can kind of tell he was phasing out of sports. And you could see that with a lot of people as they got older. Even now, like I watch football every Sunday. Watch it for 10 hours. I could cheat and pretend I watched the games and do shortcuts, and I don't. People are going to notice on my podcast. I still watch basketball. The time”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I couldn't understand it, but that's the way it was back then. I understand pieces of it. Like, I understand. You have to stay attached and you have to be objective, right? But I never understood why somebody would be covering sports if they didn't love sports. And if you love sports, you have to have a favorite something. You can't just be an atheist, a sports atheist, basically. You have to have a play you love or a team or whatever. I remember like 2000 and 2001, I must have been to 55 Red Sox games, something like that, because I was like, I just want to be there. I feel like just watching this on TV, it's not good enough. My whole thing is do the work.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I got there, my goal was like I want to lead page two and I have a piece. You know, you had that one spot where it was like best piece of the day leads the spot. And it was such a rush to be on that page the same day when like Halberstam wrote something. Hunter S. Thompson and the com started to do well pretty much immediately. Like I could tell because I had my email address at the bottom and just the amount of emails I was getting, but I still really didn't have a sense for how big it was because they weren't telling me anything. And I didn't really fully understand probably until September, October, when I started asking like, hey, can I could do this? They were like, great, we'll send you right now. And I was like, oh, I have a little juice now”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, it becomes their version of like a higher end sports commentary place. And they went out and they got Halberstamp. They got Ralph Wiley. They got Hunter S. Thompson”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you know that was it. I think everybody has, you know, if you're successful in whatever, you're going to have those three to four moments that you need somebody to believe in you in the right time or somebody to see some sort of thing you did at the right time. That was one of my moments.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the way my career had gone at that point, they were going to say, all right, well, good luck. But this was the one time when they're like, wait, wait, hold on a second. And they brought me to Bristol and then they offered me the chance to write for them and work for them. And it all amazingly worked out thanks to John Walsh and some other people.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was the second one The first one was after Nomar got hurt. And I wrote a Red Soxcom, and that crush for them. So they asked me to do another one. So I wrote about Clemens. And at that time, ironically, the Boston Herald was trying to get me to come back and do this internet calm that some of it would appear in the newspaper. And I went to ESPN. And I said, hey, I've loved writing for you guys, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep doing this because I think I'm going to do this Boston Herald thing.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that's the thing You miss your moment, man. Sometimes it doesn't come back. ESPN grab it. And they started page two, and they didn't ask me to be in it. And honestly, that was a blow to me because I was like, I can't believe even they're not trying to ask. So maybe I'm in the wrong spot. But then ultimately it kind of came around and then...”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it gave the internet credibility, and the internet just didn't have it before it. An ESP, and I think with the game it's higher, and then they started page two and they kind of realized like we have this opportunity and they don't get enough credit for that. They were the ones that saw the opportunity. Sports Illustrated was the dominant sports magazine. Sports Illustrated missed it like they completely effed up the internet a little like how Rolling Stone missed with MTV in the 80s Sports illustrated missed with sports in the late 90s, early 2000s. They should have owned all of this. They had all the best writers. And this should have been theirs, and they just missed it.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was the single most important baseball column for 25 years When it went to ESPN, People like my dad who were kind of resistant to the internet, that was the moment where people were like, I got to figure out this internet thing. I want to read gamuts. And once that happened, that was the. Neil Armstrong mom”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I've talked about this before, but the most important thing that happened with the internet and sports writing was when Peter Gambons got hired by ESPN. He had the most important baseball column.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not necessarily by the end. I think the big watershed moment for me was. The Red Sox traded for Pedro Martinez. I can't remember what year it was. But I remember I wrote a piece about it and put it up in the trade happened probably like nine o'clock. And that was kind of my voila moment for the internet. Everybody who's on the early days of the internet probably had a voila moment. For me, that was it where I was like, holy shit. The internet's going to win. My column up 18 hours before the Boston Globe column. That advantage is just too substantial. And so I really was all in on the internet after that. And, you know, the internet was weird back then. You would tell people would ask what I did. And I was like, I read this column, Digital City, Boston. People like, what's that?”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I knew that people didn't like me. I also think I probably went too far with some of this stuff. Yeah. You know, I look back, I'm like, I was way too hard on whatever. But at the time, you know, you're in your 20s. I was mad I didn't have a column and I really resented a lot of the people that I felt like had spots that I didn't. And so I feel like if I could go back, yeah, there's some stuff I'd probably take back. I was literally on my own, right? So I had no”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I remember watching them and they weren't even watching the game. And they were either sending emails or working on whatever their piece was, or I don't even know what they were doing. And I was just like, if I had that job, I wouldn't do anything other than watch everything that was happening for two plus hours and then put that in my column. Like, how do you not do that? So it was little stuff like that, but there was also like the sports radio scene at that time was just reprehensible. It was. Just so negative and so they just thrived on the negativity. So being able to turn the tables on that and have fun with that, make fun of that became part of it.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it wasn't all of them. It was a couple of them. I remember there was somebody that covered the Celtics and I would go and sit in my dad's seats because we were midcourt at that point. And the reporters were still sitting at the press table at midcourt. So you're right there. You're just picking up everything.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it might have been more than that. It might have been like 200. Yeah. Getting some attention locally, especially because I used to make fun of the media members all the time.”
2023-02-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · The Ringer: Bill Simmons · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT