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Former ESPN columnist Bill Simmons piled onto the avalanche that has collapsed on the “Worldwide Leader” for firing Zach Lowe on Thursday.
Simmons said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that the Worldwide Leader “lost its soul” when it fired his close friend Lowe, whom the Ringer founder employed at his ESPN vertical, Grantland, from 2011-15.
“I don’t know. I wish I could explain ESPN and I just can’t,” said Simmons, who worked for ESPN in the early 2000s before his 2014 departure.
“There’s a little bit of a lawlessness––as someone who was previously suspended for three weeks, suspended on Twitter a couple of times––I look at some of the stuff I did, and it wasn’t one-tenth as bad as some of the stuff that people do now.
“Like Ryan Clark openly challenging them about his extension? I mean, do they have bosses? Including if they want to have a sex tape on Instagram. ‘Ah, it’s fine; I’ll look the other way on that one. Is he going to be on ‘First Take’ on Tuesday? Ok, cool, we’re good. Unc was getting it on!’”
The decision to let go of Lowe was largely due to his seven-figure salary, The Athletic reported.
Simmons said: “I just don’t understand it, like who is in charge? What are you trying to do?”
In his takedown of his former employer, Simmons’ quote referenced two highly publicized situations involving two former NFL stars turned personalities in Clark and Sharpe.
Ryan Clark publicly threatened to leave ESPN before re-signing with the company in February 2024.
Shannon Sharpe was heard by the entire world having sex on Instagram Live but faced no consequences for the blunder and was back on airways days later.
ESPN also recently lost another of its NBA talents when reporter Adrian Wojnarowski shockingly resigned earlier in September after saying he was burnt out.
He is now the general manager for the men’s basketball team at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure.
“If you’re supposed to be the WorldWide Leader, how aren’t you going to have this stuff?” Simmons said about the recent massive changes that ESPN has endured in 2024.
“NBA in general the last year, they lose Doc [Rivers], they lose JJ [Reddick], they lose their lead color analyst twice after firing [Jeff] Van Gundy, [Adrian] Woj is just gone, now Zach Lowe is gone. It’s just kinda your brain is spinning.
“Now I guess what we are going to get, and I like Stephen A. [Smith], so this is not a slight at Stephen A. I really think he’s a good guy. It feels like they are moving toward ‘It’s a Knicks playoff game. Here’s Stephen A’s entrance.’ And that’s kinda what they think people want, and I don’t think they are right.
“It just feels like the Zach Lowe moment feels like something we’ll remember where we’re like, ‘Wow, remember when ESPN was creeping this way and then they laid off Zach and went this way.’”
Lowe, widely considered among the best NBA writers in the business, will now enter free agency while ESPN scrambles to find its way.
ESPN’s decision to move on from Lowe appears to signal a change in its business strategy.
“They whiffed on ESPN Radio, it seems like they’ve whiffed on the podcast business, but the YouTube and TikTok and Snapchat, you name any sort of thing that has risen in the last 12 years, they are in there in the best possible ways, and maybe that’s their business,” Simmons said. “They obviously see some sort of vision that’s different than what we see.”
“I did notice that Zach was trending on Twitter along with Kendrick Perkins, and that’s one of the interesting topics of this. People are looking at this like ESPN is choosing this Kendrick Perkins direction of their basketball coverage over the Zach Lowe direction.”
Simmons continued by saying that Perkins’ hot-take style of entertaining a TV audience isn’t his preference.
He had a simple suggestion for viewers who are complaining about it: “Don’t watch it.”
“Now they’ve pinned themselves in a position with Stephen A. where they basically have to keep him. He can name his price,” Simmons said of Smith, whose contract reportedly expires next year.
