Bill Simmons Blasts SportsCenter; Could He Be Considering Exit From ESPN?

ESPN personality Bill Simmons has never been afraid to be that one guy at the four letter network never afraid to speak his mind. It’s gotten him in trouble before, as ESPN isn’t fond of anyone lashing out against the network, but Simmons is back at it again and the relationship between himself and ESPN seems to be souring to the point where he may latch on elsewhere and leave ESPN after all his years of service.

According to Mike Foss from FTW.com, the latest Simmons controversy surrounds a joke he told that was apparently edited out of a broadcast of SportsCenter. Simmons wasn’t happy about it and sent out a very cryptic tweet about how the last eight months are starting to make “a lot of sense”.

This could be interpreted as Simmons contemplating leaving ESPN, but his last tweet was more a comment that he could move away from being an on-air presence and stick strictly to the wildly popular Grantland.com and his podcast but those both are under the control of ESPN. This isn’t the first time Simmons has run afoul with ESPN and it’s not the first time they’ve done something to set him off.

But if he does leave ESPN, he’d be leaving a company he helped mold into the beast it is today. Simmons helped pioneer ESPN.com into the premier sports website it is, but when it got too ‘studio’, he branched out and created Grantland.com. If he leaves he would likely not go to another network, as he’s a blogger by trade and is a big enough entity in of himself that he wouldn’t need to bolstering of another network like NBC Sports Network to be read, seen or heard from.

He’s likely not going anywhere, as ESPN knows losing him means they lose a massive part of their audience, but it’s a situation to monitor as whether you like him or not, Simmons seems to be the only no nonsense guy at ESPN.

The real question to ask is what will the punishment be from ESPN for lashing out at SportsCenter?