Bill Simmons, arguably America’s most influential sports personality, will leave ESPN when his contract expires in September.
New York Times media reporter Richard Sandomir first reported the split, the culmination of months of failed negotiations.
“It was clear it was time to move on,” ESPN president John Skipper said in a statement.
Simmons, a part-time bartender who moonlighted as an AOL blogger known as The Boston Sports Guy, parlayed his online following into an columnist job at ESPN.com in 2001.
He became America’s most widely read sports writer as the anchor of ESPN.com’s attitude-inflected Page 2 microsite and a columnist for ESPN The Magazine. Simmons later spearheaded a series of successful ventures at the Disney-owned sports giant, including the popular B.S. Report podcast, the 30 for 30 documentary film series and the launch of the sports and pop culture boutique site Grantland.com, where he serves as editor-in-chief.
Yet amid those victories, Simmons’ relationship with ESPN’s management had become somewhat frayed, a deterioration exhaustively documented by Deadspin last year. In September, he was suspended for three weeks for a profane podcast that saw him call NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a liar over his handling of the Ray Rice domestic-violence scandal. Not long after his return, he blasted ESPN’s popular Mike & Mike sports talk radio show on Twitter.
Simmons, 45, became embroiled in a major controversy in January 2014 when a Grantland story about the inventor of a magical golf putter posthumously outed a transgender woman. He apologized in a nearly 3,000-word mea culpa.
Skipper said ESPN remains committed to keeping Grantland operating.
“ESPN’s relationship with Bill has been mutually beneficial,” Skipper said. “He has produced great content for us for many years and ESPN has provided him many new opportunities to spread his wings.”
An email to Simmons requesting comment was not immediately returned.
