The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 25 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Bill Simmons: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell lied about Ray Rice
“And they did. Though Rice's told them. No, he lied.”
Bill Simmons Says Sports Illustrated Completely Fumbled the Digital Era
“Sports Illustrated was the dominant sports magazine. And Sports Illustrated missed it. Like, they completely effed up the internet. A little like how Rolling Stone missed with MTV in the eighties. Sports Illustrated missed with sports in the late nineties, ear…”
Simmons: ESPN canceled scheduled 2008 Obama interview over political bias concerns
“ESPN squashed it, and they squashed it for reasons that... I didn't fully understand. ESPN was very worried about... Bias, or... Seeming like they were biased one way or the other, with Democrats, Republicans, whatever it was. And they were just like, well, yo…”
ESPN Undersold Grantland's $8M Podcast Ad Inventory For $750k, Says Bill Simmons
“They sold all of our podcasts advertised in the subway for 750,000 dollars a year. When we had, it was easily six, seven, eight million dollars worth of advertising we could have gotten from the pods at that time.”
Bill Simmons Was Shocked Spotify Paid $200M For Gimlet's $10M Revenue
“And then they bought Gimlet and they bought Gimlet for like two hundred million dollars. And we were like, wow, Gimlet makes like Ten million dollars a year. They just got two hundred million dollars. Like, what the hell? Like, we were way more profitable than…”
Simmons: ESPN was much more political and sinister than Spotify
“I think ESPN was way more political and way more sinister. Spotify's not sinister, but it's also a big company that has a lot of opposing objectives”
Simmons: Attributing career success to luck is a 'loser attitude'
“I think when people talk about luck, it almost feels like it's kind of like a loser attitude where it's like, oh, that was lucky. It's like, I don't feel like there's a lot of luck with this stuff. Opportunity can be luck, but you still have to like nail the o…”
Simmons: Excluding Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens from Hall of Fame Is Insane
“If I'm taking somebody to a museum, I want them to learn as much about the history of a sport as they could possibly learn, and to not have Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in there is insane.”
Simmons: Sports journalists cannot be authentic without personal fandom
“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 player you love, or a team, or wha…”
Simmons: ESPN paid Rick Reilly more despite Simmons being more important
“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.”
Simmons: HBO invested $5 million into The Ringer
“HBO put in five million bucks as part of, they didn't want me to do the ringer. They wanted me to do the TV show and that's it.”
Simmons: Creative Spitballing Cannot Happen Over Zoom
“The spitballing is what gets hurt. You can't do it on Zoom. You can't.”
Simmons: Peter Gammons joining ESPN.com legitimized online sports journalism
“The most important thing that happened with the internet and sports writing was when Peter Gamitz got hired by ESPN. He had the most important baseball column. And it was the single most important baseball column for 25 years. When it went to ESPN.com. ESPN.co…”
Simmons: Writers only retain audiences by being unpredictable and adding creative hooks
“I just want people to come back to read me, 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?”
Simmons: Grantland broke even and produced nine of ESPN's top ten podcasts
“Grantland broke even, but we should have made more money. We had nine of the top 10 podcasts at ESPN during a time when podcasts were starting to make real money and they didn't know how to monetize it.”
Simmons: ESPN relationship was irreparable after unpaid suspension
“I think that thing that really got me was that I got suspended without pay for the first two weeks, and I already felt like I was underpaid for them, and I was killing it for them, and it was kind of irreparable after that.”
Simmons: Long-form interviews work better as podcasts than TV shows
“What I didn't count on was that it's just more fun to listen to a podcast. You can listen to it on your own time. You don't have to watch it.”
Simmons: Sports-driven talk shows have not worked on TV in 15 years
“Especially sports-driven talk shows, there's really no record of them working in the last 15 years.”
Simmons: 1976 Celtics-Suns Finals game probably remains the most famous modern NBA game
“Yeah, it became the most famous modern NBA game, and it probably still is.”
Simmons: Column writing has a shelf life as readers tire of writers' voices
“People get tired of writer's voices. I'm going to run out of things to say at some point.”
Simmons: Yahoo tried to recruit him away from ESPN in 2007
“That I had, my contract was coming up the beginning of oh seven and Yahoo was trying to get me to jump over, which I didn't want to do.”
Simmons: Pod Save America podcast originally started at The Ringer
“Like even like we had the pod save America guys, that podcast started with us.”
Simmons: Early Newspaper Pitch Presaged Future Internet Column Formats
“I remember I spent two weeks. I pointed out this whole Sunday thing for the Sunday paper, this whole page that I wanted them to give me. And it was like, it had like a 600 work column. It had these lists. It looked a lot like kind of what the internet would lo…”