Worthwhile Will Leitch essay on Bill Simmons

Well, that's one version of why they took down comments on his columns.

The other is the commentators at Deadspin went crazy one day and ... poof! ... there haven't been comments since then.

 

Maybe we should create a special board here to host all the comments.

 

Perhaps there are bits and pieces of truthiness in all versions of the story. But if memory serves, this was the last time comments were allowed on his columns (but I could be wrong about that).

http://deadspin.com/233309/fun-with-espn-its-almost-too-easy

 

Don't think I could have said it better myself.
Simmons needs to go back to typing in track agate.
As Major Hochstetter opined of Col. Klink: "He is a man who could be great. Except for the fact that he wasn't very good."
(and, yes, I like my own touch of using a line from old sitcom to demean the online columnist king of pop culture references.)

 

I actually remember the specific moment that his comment section disappeared, because I was sort of following the drama and took note of it at the time.

His last column to have a comment section was the first one he did after the Colts won the Super Bowl. Simmons was in Miami for the game and all week had been posting inane columns about media day, the city, celebrites, parties and all that other pre-Super Bowl shit. Yet, oddly enough, he failed to write anything whatsoever about the actual game, or even acknowledge that it had happened, in his first column after the game.

This was significant because Simmons was notorious for some vicious "Manning the choker who'll never win the big one" themed columns, so readers we're tuning in to see him eat crow, and they absolutely torched him in the comments to his next piece for wussing out and failing to acknowledge it. After a couple days of it, the comments following that piece disappeared and his columns never had a comment section again.

As for the claim that they simply took it down because it was "overloading the servers", that might be the official reason ESPN gave for it, and hell it might even be true. But I find the timing might suspicious that they chose to do it immediately after the worst beating he ever took in that section. Think they would've done the same thing if that "overloading" had been praise?

 

rock on, Stoney

 

Will his kids be old enough to leave the house in 12 years? He's already more than half way there with the rest of the description.

 

Olbermann returns fire ... http://keitholbermann.mlblogs.com/archives/2010/03/not_so_big_mac_after_all.html

 

How long before Simmons is Worst Person in the World? And how long before they make up by having K.O. appear on a very special episode of a Sports Guy podcast?

 

They seriously need to take this to PM.

 

ESPN is right for not putting comments on Simmons and Reilly stories. People that comment on ESPN are 75 pct trolls and vicious weirdos, and Simmons' least-read stuff would still get 10x as many as someone else. Ironically Deadspin does it right, by pre-approving most commentators.

Also, I bet KO talked to people in TV/broadcast and not Simmons' direct superiors or the high, high ups.