The Ringer is Live

Skipper says in this NY Times story today that Simmons is delusional.

Bill Simmons Prepares to Stand Up to Sports Incorporated

“Bill would rather spin conspiracy theories and be perceived as a martyr than take responsibility for his own actions. Let me be unequivocal and clear and take responsibility for my actions: I alone made the decision, and it had nothing to do with his comments about the commissioner. I severed our relationship with Bill because of his repeated lack of respect for this company and, more importantly, the people who work here.”

 

I think that's a fundamental issue with ESPN now though. Can you have all that much respect for the monolith that somehow employs / employed Curt Schilling, Stephen A. Smith, Woody Paige, Bill Simmons, Chris Berman and 50 Pretty or Handsome Talking Heads? The company has become such a corporate behemoth that there isn't really a clear "feel" anymore. It wants to be in the business of broadcasting and a league partner for the NFL, NBA, MLB and soccer, but the other half of its programming is opinion shows.

 

I have never seen a Skipper quote that reads that angry. Daaaaaaaaamn.

 

A bump: Wondering, now that it's been around for about a month, if anyone else is totally unimpressed with The Ringer. I wasn't completely enamored with Grantland, but almost any day I checked in, I found at least one story that I didn't consider a waste of my time. Here, I'm finding very little that draws me in, and even less that impresses me. And the few things that show promise seem like they're done when they're barely starting to get into the topic. (Surprised, in general, how short most of the articles seem to be. Definitely not taking the Simmons "anything worth writing about is worth writing 2,000 words too many" approach.)

Am I alone on this? Or is the lack of chatter here a sign of general disinterest?

 

It's been very meh for me. I admittedly only read the sports stuff (same as I did for Grantland) but while I'd eat up Grantland's stories, these just haven't sucked me in. And ... I'm a Cavs fan. I've been devouring everything NBA-related I can over the past 2 weeks, including The Ringer's content. For the most part I think they've just been...uninteresting.

 

It's almost like you dudes don't care which show currently had the "championship belt" of TV.

(That's a bit I assume is just relegated to the "The Watch" podcast with Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan but is a fair illustration of things I dislike about The Ringer and/or Grantland.
... I actually really liked Greenwald previously, but this podcast and the GoT after show were both fairly brutal IMO.)

 

I generally like Simmons, and really like Greenwald, but yeah, I agree that the championship belt stuff for TV just makes no sense. How do you compare like, Veep to Archer to Game of Thrones to The Jinx? Depending on your perspective, they're all really good shows, but for really different reasons. At one point, they were trying to do that gimmick on the podcast on a weekly basis, even though pretty much every prominent show was on break.

 

I rely on Twitter in many ways to vet my reading options, or from roundups on certain sites I visit like The Big Lead and Real Clear Sports...and The Ringer and its stories are not showing up. I liked certain aspects of Grantland (Lowe and Jonah Keri and Rembert Browne) but they're not there. They were the writers who set Grantland apart. Robert Mays is a fine writer, and I enjoyed his piece on Buddy Ryan yesterday, which included a fresh interview with Dan Hampton. But most of the writers they've kept from Grantland don't do anything for me. Like Grantland, the Ringer seems to suffer from a lack of focus. I really could give two shits to read someone's Game of Thrones recap. And I would say that about show I actually watch and like. It's like reading movie reviews after you've seen the film, and who the fuck does that? The whole TV recap movement escapes me. It seemed to start with "Lost," the most insufferable TV show ever.

 

Ever hear of a little show called The Bachelorette ?

Read a recap of that one day when you've got a few minutes of your life you want to piss away.

I highly recommend a fella goes by the name Reality Steve.

 

I guess I was misunderstood. I have no use for TV recaps. And recaps of reality TV must be ever worse.

 

Actually, I think it started, at least in mainstream media form, with Alan Sepinwall and The Sopranos in the Newark Star-Ledger.

 

I get why people write them and read them, in as much I get why people read recaps of sports games they've watched. They want to see where their opinions of what happened gibe or run contrary to others. I get it, but it's just not for me.