Bill Simmons is leaving ESPN

Hyden is just the worst of Simmons' treatment of pop culture like sports.

 

Sure, he doesn't have the draw, but that ship has sailed and who else could they get. I assume Connolly will be more of a manager type and let the writes do the heavy lifting. Not necessarily a bad thing if he has the right writers.

It's Myyyyyyyy Wish ... and I'm glad I'm not the only one who changes the channel when Rinaldi comes on. Jeez, he's annoying. And Schaap seems like a pretty good reporter, but he's annoying as hell, as well.

 

I think Schaap has gotten less annoying over the years. He's a great reporter and he's not as smug as he was 10-15 years ago.

With Rinaldi, I think he knows exactly what he's doing to be overdramatic and it's fucking annoying.

 

Schaap's reputation turned on a dime in my eyes (and in a lot of other folks') when he stood his ground against Bob Knight in the post-Indiana firing interview in around 2001.

 

I like Hyden, but I think I might be the only one, judging from online comments, haha. I would say this - I think music "criticism" is probably the most volatile and subjective of all forms of criticism. Like even with movies, there is often a technical aspect you can critique. Some of Klosterman's earlier books / essays on music - and how the guy from Ratt barely got an obit - are interesting to me on the subject.

 

It'll have to get better real estate on ESPN for that. Simmons is gone, so all the traffic he brought with his content is gone.

Some of the stuff on Grantland, simply put, was not frequently read.

 

I felt the same way. Also, the story in which he stood up to and ultimately walked away from Bobby Fischer for insulting his father, Dick, who was at one point very close to Fischer, was fascinating to me.

 

Something micropolitan wrote on the student loan thread made me think of this even though they're not really related, but I wonder how much, if it wasn't about nickels and dimes, the Dr. V thing played a part in this.

 

It's all about nickels and dimes. ESPN looked at the ROI on Simmons' salary and putting up with his ego and determined he wasn't generating enough of them.

 

Bump but I think this is merited:

As cord cutters grow, ESPN reaches a crossroad on costs

For 20 years ESPN made its money off passive viewers, now paying $72 a year for ESPN, whether they watch it or not. Yet as this older demographic dies off, people under 40 don't automatically go with cable or satellite.

(We see this constantly in local news so we're trying like mad to make a decent mobile site and milk traditional platforms while we still can).

Rights fees go up for ESPN for the big items but I'm not certain they'll get the automatic $72 a year the way they have of late.

 

I was just thinking about this yesterday (not the article but the general topic) as I turned on NBC to watch Wimbledon, then remembered it was on ESPN.

It seems like it would be very difficult to be a sports fan and not have ESPN. But then I really thought about the things I'd miss -- of everything ESPN has, the only thing I'd really be chapped about is the college football playoff.

Sure, I'd continue to pay $72 a year for it, maybe more ... but in the doomsday predictions where it would cost $250-300 a year, I could live without it.

 

Live sports is probably the biggest reason I haven't cut the cord. My brother-in-law is a cord cutter and I could totally see myself following his example, except he doesn't care about the sports he misses.