History Creator / TheSportsGuy

William John Simmons III (born September 25, 1969) is [[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index The Sports Guy]], known for his pop-culture-reference-laden columns about current events in sports. He started out writing columns as the "Boston Sports Guy" in 1997, which were successful enough to attract the attention of ESPN; they hired him to write for their "Page 2" section in 2001, where he stayed until the summer of 2011, when he moved to the website [[http://www.grantland.com/ Grantland]], an ESPN-owned off-shoot blog staffed by a number of noted sports and pop culture writers, including several you wouldn't expect to write about sports (''Dave Eggers''?), of which he also serves as editor-in-chief. Since 2007, he's also hosted a regular {{podcast}} called ''The B.S. Report''.

Simmons has also written two books, ''Now I Can Die In Peace'' (about the Boston Red Sox' 2004 World Series championship) and ''The Book of Basketball'' (which is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a book of Simmons' opinions on basketball]]). He was also a writer for ''Series/JimmyKimmelLive'' for a time, served as executive producer for ESPN's ''30 for 30'' documentaries, and, as of 2012, serves as a panelist for ''NBA Countdown'' on ABC and ESPN.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September, and ''Grantland'' was shutdown a month later. He was since hired by Creator/{{HBO}}, and he will curate a new site for them, [[http://theringer.com/ The Ringer]], along with a [[http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/bill-simmons-hbo-andre-the-giant-princess-bride documentary]] series in the style of ''30 For 30'' and a new talk show, ''Any Given Wednesday''.

* DisproportionateRetribution: His [[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/040720&num=0 Vengeance Scale]] article, rated from 0.1 (UsefulNotes/{{OJ|Simpson}}'s attempt to find "the real killers.") to 10.0 ([[Film/TheUsualSuspects Keyser Söze]].)

** He often lampshades how much of a homer he is for Boston sports. He's recently taken to calling himself a "[[Series/TheSimpsons homersexual]]".

* GameOfNerds: Kind of. He wrote about being introduced to new statistical analysis methods in baseball and basketball, but he doesn't fully accept the new concepts that challenge conventional wisdom. For example, he still thinks stats like RBI's and pitcher W-L record are meaningful.

* HypocriticalHumor: #8 on his [[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/100129&sportCat=nfl list of sports' most tortured teams]] is the New York Knicks. His additionall comments:

** He was caught in the background of a picture on rival site CNNSI.com checking his Blackberry while Blake Griffin lay down a thunderous dunk. He even had some AndThenJohnWasAZombie stress about potentially becoming the distracted UsefulNotes/LosAngeles fan he always hated in Boston.

** Similarly, he refers to the Thunder as the "Zombie Sonics" referring to the BaitAndSwitch the owners pulled by promising to keep the team in Seattle before buying it only to move to Oklahoma at the first allowed opportunity.

** Ocasionally, he also makes references to ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', another one of his favorite shows; he also has a liking for ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm'' and has even likened the best seasons with pantheon episodes of the show with particularly dominant seasons by pitchers who won the MVP Award in Major League Baseball.

** Invoked in his September 22, 2014 podcast where he went on a profane rant calling NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell a liar regarding the Ray Rice domestic violence case, and then all but dared his bosses at ESPN to punish him for it (they suspended him for three weeks and deleted the podcast from their site).
* TransNature: In both ''Now I Can Die In Peace'' and ''The Book of Basketball'', he talks about how, as a kid, he had a racial identity crisis, where he hated that he had been born white instead of black, even forcing his teacher to call him his self-given Muslim name "Jabaal Abdul-Simmons," and [[{{Blackface}} colored his face in in pictures.]]

* [[WhatTheHellHero What The Hell NBA?]]: The Sports Guy was less than thrilled at how the 2011 NBA lockout was handled. In particular, he gave shots to the owners for paying their players too much and granting massive contracts that eventually brought the NBA to its crippling problem; the agents for making the players go for more money than they could possibly handle; [[ItsAllAboutMe and finally, the players themselves for trying to be tough guys and not wanting to accept more flexible solutions while bringing less or nothing at all to the table.]] It got so bad that the Sports Guy himself stated that Gary Bettman, the current commissioner of the NHL, actually stood to gain A LOT from the lockout by taking lessons on how NOT TO handle said lockout while the league was starting to enjoy one of its best seasons yet. You can see all of his opinions on his archives at Grantland as well as his Twitter account. Unfortunately, Bettman didn't listen, and one year later, the NHL went through another lockout that cost the NHL half a season.

** He often lampshades how much of a homer he is for Boston sports. He's recently taken to calling himself a "[[TheSimpsons homersexual]]".

* SelfDeprecation: Simmons is not above putting insulting e-mails he's recieved in his mailbag columns, and even agreeing with some of them.

-->''Yep, these are my readers.''

* DisproportionateRetribution: His [[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/040720&num=0 Vengeance Scale]] article, rated from 0.1 (OJ's attempt to find "the real killers.") to 10.0 ([[Film/TheUsualSuspects Keyser Soze]].)

* ArtifactTitle: The "30 for 30" documentary series he produced was given that title because it was originally going to have only 30 episodes, but was so critically and commercially successful that it was extended with the title "ESPN Presents" and then changed back to its original "30 for 30".

* FanonDiscontinuity: [[{{In-universe}} Bill thinks this]] of ''Film/TheNextKarateKid'' and ''Film/RockyV''.

* DespairEventHorizon: His "[[http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/020528 Levels of Losing]]" column, in which he broke down how bad a loss feels to the team's fans afterwards.

* OldShame: The Sports Guy cartoon that ran on ESPN.com during 2004-05 is generally treated like this by Simmons in his columns and podcasts.
* OneOfUs: This is a guy who ''computed the stat lines'' of Michael J. Fox and his teammates' basketball games in ''Film/TeenWolf''. One of us? He might be ''worse'' than us!
* PromotedFanboy: He was formerly a bartender before ascending to ESPN's premier comedy writer.

'''Bill Simmons:''' ''(Trying to fight off 100,000 bolts of electric current ...)''
* CatchPhrase: "Yup, these are my readers." at the end of his mailbag columns, always in response to a series of letters that reveals how obsessive or bizzare his fans are.

* FullNameBasis: Bernard Karmell Pollard. Bill uses his full name because [[GunmanWithThreeNames it makes him sound like an assassin]].[[note]] Pollard is a journeyman defensive player who has, by chance, injured ''four'' separate Patriot offensive superstars and was the last player to ever tackle Aaron Hernandez.[[/note]] After Pollard injured Stevan Ridley enroute to beating the Patriots in the 2012 AFC Championship game, Simmons devoted an entire mailbag to Boston fans ranting about him. Simmons publicly sighed with relief when Pollard signed with a team that doesn't play New England in 2013.

* NeverLiveItDown: Invoked in his columns. Apparently, he hasn't totally recovered from The Catch by David Tyree or Tom Brady's crippling knee injury in the NFL 2008 season and reminds himself of these events by ocassion either by a footnote or with a passing mention.

Simmons has also written two books, ''Now I Can Die In Peace'' (about the Boston Red Sox' 2004 World Series championship) and ''The Book of Basketball'' (which is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a book of Simmons' opinions on basketball]]). He was also a writer for ''Jimmy Kimmel Live'' for a time, served as executive producer for ESPN's ''30 for 30'' documentaries, and, as of 2012, serves as a panelist for ''NBA Countdown'' on ABC and ESPN.

** Every week during the NFL season, he and Jimmy Kimmel Live writer "Cousin Sal" Sal Iacono guess the initial gambling lines for the upcoming games that week. Early in the 2010 season, Simmons began to heap praise on Tampa Bay Buccaneers starting quarterback Josh Freeman, claiming that he was a quarterback you could build a franchise around. Ever since Week 6 of that season, Sal has taken time during the recording of these podcasts to 'play a voicemail' left by Simmons on Sal's phone praising Josh Freeman, which is in fact Sal doing an over-the-top imitation of Simmons's voice and writing style. In 2011, these segments became more intricate, often including sound effects and involving other subjects. The Week 10 2011 edition of this 'voicemail' was so over-the-top it was even edited out of the released podcast, revealed days later on twitter to have involved 'Simmons' being raped in the YMCA sauna by Jerry Sandusky before hanging up.

Bill Simmons is [[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index The Sports Guy]], known for his pop-culture-reference-laden columns about current events in sports. He started out writing columns as the "Boston Sports Guy" in 1997, which were successful enough to attract the attention of ESPN; they hired him to write for their "Page 2" section in 2001, where he stayed until the summer of 2011, when he moved to the website [[http://www.grantland.com/ Grantland]], an ESPN-owned off-shoot blog staffed by a number of noted sports and pop culture writers, including several you wouldn't expect to write about sports (''Dave Eggers''?), of which he also serves as editor-in-chief. Since 2007, he's also hosted a regular {{podcast}} called ''The B.S. Report''.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September, and ''Grantland'' was shutdown a month later. He was since hired by {{HBO}}, and he will curate a new site for them, [[http://theringer.com/ The Ringer]], along with a [[http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/bill-simmons-hbo-andre-the-giant-princess-bride documentary]] series in the style of ''30 For 30'' and a new talk show, ''Any Given Wednesday''.

* {{Twitter}}: He attempted to use Twitter to organize up-to-the-minute taunting chants at Celtics games.
** [[http://twitter.com/#!/CelticsChants/status/13870364675 Which]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJl-0TML4i4 worked.]]

* ShoutOut: Is a massive fan of 80's films like ''TheKarateKid'', ''Film/TeenWolf'', and the ''Franchise/{{Rocky}}'' series as well as ''Series/TheWire''. He makes constant reference to them and even sometimes organizes his columns around scenes or quotes from them.

** This should come as no surprise, as Bill was influenced by Creator/DavidFosterWallace--who incidentally is one of the few major literary figures to do sportswriting (Wallace wrote a lot about tennis), along with HunterSThompson.

** Ocasionally, he also makes references to ''{{Seinfeld}}'', another one of his favorite shows; he also has a liking for ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm'' and has even likened the best seasons with pantheon episodes of the show with particularly dominant seasons by pitchers who won the MVP Award in Major League Baseball.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September, and ''Grantland'' was shutdown a month later. He was since hired by {{HBO}}, and he will curate a new site for them, [[http://theringer.com/ The Ringer]], along with a [[http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/bill-simmons-hbo-andre-the-giant-princess-bride documentary]] series in the style of ''30 For 30''.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September, and ''Grantland'' was shutdown a month later. He was since hired by {{HBO}}, and it is rumored that will curate a new site for them, [[http://theringer.com/ The Ringer]], along with a [[http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/bill-simmons-hbo-andre-the-giant-princess-bride documentary]] series in the style of ''30 For 30''.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September, and ''Grantland'' was shutdown a month later. He was since hired by {{HBO}}, and it is rumored that will curate a new site for them, along with a [[http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/bill-simmons-hbo-andre-the-giant-princess-bride documentary]] series in the style of ''30 For 30''.

** Ocasionally, he also makes references to ''{{Seinfeld}}'', another one of his favorite shows; he also has a liking for ''CurbYourEnthusiasm'' and has even likened the best seasons with pantheon episodes of the show with particularly dominant seasons by pitchers who won the MVP Award in Major League Baseball.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September, and his website ''Grantland'' was shutdown a month later. He was since hired by {{HBO}}, and it is rumored that will curate a new site for them, along with a [[http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/bill-simmons-hbo-andre-the-giant-princess-bride documentary]] series in the style of ''30 For 30''.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September. {{HBO}} has hired him ever since.

In May of 2015, Simmons appeared on ''The Dan Patrick Show'', a move which reportedly was the tipping point with ESPN. They announced they would not be renewing his contract after September.

* OlympicGames: Traveled to London to [[http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8213326/grantland-2012-summer-olympics cover the 2012 edition]] in his typical style.

* FanonDiscontinuity: [[{{In-universe}} Bill thinks this]] of ''TheNextKarateKid'' and ''Film/RockyV''.