The Bill Simmons Podcast - Catching Up With John Skipper | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by his good friend and former boss John Skipper, current executive chairman of DAZN, to discuss their time together at ESPN in the 2000s. They discuss ESPN the Magazine, acquiring television rights, Mobile ESPN, '30 for 30,' Grantland, Bill's departure from ESPN, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on The Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by DAZN. The old way of watching sports is over. Stream over 100 fight nights a year featuring the biggest names in boxing and MMA without the pain of pay-per-view. Canelo, Triple G, Daniel Jacobs, Rory McDonald, many more. Behind-the-scenes content leading up to Fight Night. A library of classic fights, original programming, everything live and on demand, available on almost any device. Download the DAZN app on your smart TVs, tablets, mobile gaming consoles,

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or go right to SeatGeek.com. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com, the world's greatest website where we are knee-deep in March Madness, Game of Thrones, NBA playoffs, music, movies, an unbelievable stretch of TV right now, as well as The Ringer Podcast Network where you can find all of our classics,

sports, pop culture. Dual Threat this week with Ryan Rosillo. He's got Jason Witten on, which I think Rosillo is really happy about this one. He's usually a tough critic of his own work. But that's on there. And Larry Wilmore, David Chang, One Shining Podcast, winging it with Kent Bazemore and Vince Carter

and Annie Finberg, JJ Reddick. We're just all over the map with a whole bunch of pods. All the ringer sports and pop culture ones. Channel 33, movie things. Check all of them out. Coming up, John Skipper, my old boss at ESPN. We kind of had an acrimonious ending

and a few years passed and we're going to talk about everything that happened with us because we're actually partnering up again here, at least for a couple months with The Zone and the Bill Simmons podcast. But he came in on Monday, April Fool's, ironically. He came in, we had had dinner probably five, six months before that, four months before that, and talked a lot about how things went sideways with us because I think it was a relationship both of us had really cared about

at one point in time. And, you know, the years pass, you get older, you realize you're going to do, you would have done some things differently. We're going to talk about all that.

It's all coming up. I've never quite done a podcast like this one, but it was worth doing. And, and I'm glad he came in and hopefully you'll enjoy it. That's coming up right now. First,

our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. We are taping this on April Fool's Day, but it's running later in the week. Kind of fitting that this is an April Fool's podcast. I laughed when we said we're going to do this on April Fool's Day. I'm not sure who's foolish here, but I did laugh about that. Both of us. John Skipper is here, head of DAZN. What are the common mispronunciations of that?

DAZN? DAZN. DAZN? DAZN, DAZN. DAZN? I haven't heard DAZN, even though we have a business in Germany. So DAZN, how did the DAZN thing, what does it stand for? It stands for DAZN.

Okay. And the explanation is that the company needed a brand that could be cleared in the entire world, which is not trivial. It's actually harder to do than you think. I think the logo looks great. The D-A-Z-N. Yeah. We get a little grief guff for the DAZN. Yeah. Which I think probably in the United States

has sort of the most baggage, right? Yeah. Most of the world, it's just, it's an odd thing. And I'm always reminded that most brands aren't good brands until you have a good product. And then nobody cares about the brand. Well, don't they always say like four letter acronyms and it doesn't even matter what the four letters are, but people remember four letters easiest.

They do. And by the way, maybe the greatest four-letter acronym of all time. Right. ESPN. Yeah, seriously. I mean, it doesn't really mean anything anymore except sports. No, it makes no sense. So we've known each other almost 20 years.

Yeah. There was a period where we didn't speak. It's amazing. We could go into that. We looked exactly the same. Yeah, we looked exactly the same. My hair's probably whiter. And this is both weird and not weird.

Because I feel like we have such a history together. It's totally normal that we had dinner, I think, a few months ago. We talked about a bunch of stuff. I think when somebody's in your life for two decades, you probably have some bumps along the way. We had a really major bump. This is like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We might get married again.

In fact, we are getting married again. It's a three-month marriage. Yeah, we have a three-month marriage, quickie marriage. But I think both of us felt like we had such a history together that was mostly really good and rewarding that it would be fun to work together again. And even if it was in a pretty small way. Yeah, look, I am shockingly comfortable, right? I mean, there's a slight trepidation. You and I actually haven't done anything public for a long time. And so I had a little trepidation, but I come in and I sit down on the sofa and it's quite comfortable. We're laughing about Larry Bird and Maggie Johnson. You got Larry Bird right next to you.

Muhammad Ali right behind you. And it's great to see you. And it will be fun to do a little something together, which we are. So DAZN and The Ringer are going to do a little business together and have a little fun together, which I appreciate. And it really makes me feel good to figure out some other way to pay you exorbitant sums of money again. Quite deserved. It was always deserved before. It's deserved again.

And I think what you've done at the Ringer is remarkable and fabulous. Thank you. It's a pleasure for me. It's like a little payback, happy payback for Grantland, right? I get to have a little recompense and say, you know what? What you've done at uh the ringer spectacular you kind of redid it again twice hard to do twice thank you let's go backwards um let's go back to your background because i think it's really interesting you started

rolling stone you're a publishing guy yep uh espn brings you in actually no let's stay at rolling stone for a second you're working in rolling stone, no, let's stay at Rolling Stone for a second. You're working at Rolling Stone for Jan Wenner when he was at the height of being Jan Wenner, for better or worse. He just moved the Rolling Stone to New York. I started there in 1979, right out of graduate school, Columbia. They were at 745 Fifth Avenue, which couldn't be a tonier address. It's the Squibb building across from the Plaza Hotel, across from the GM building. Yeah.

Spectacular offices, the 22nd, 23rd, 27th, 28th floor overlooking the park. But once you got inside the walls, completely and utterly countercultural. You know, Buddy Miles showed up one time with a gun demanding to get in the office. And you had all these San Francisco transplants. It was great. It was New York, pre-AIDS, pre-crack. So you had a real sense of freedom. And the city was tough and dangerous.

But it was so exciting. And they had such DNA back then. I mean, that was the – them and Sports Illustrated, I think, were probably the magazines in the late 70s, right? It was still a quarterfold tabloid. It still was printed on newsprint. And it's still – the first issue I got there was Ricky Lee Jones. I don't know if you remember that cover, but it was a spectacular cover.

Blondie was on the cover shortly after that. I mean, the journalism was unbelievable. cover but it was a spectacular cover you know blondie was on the cover shortly after that i mean it they the journalism was unbelievable annie leibowitz was still the chief photographer john was a you know at studio 54 and was a toast to the town so it was hunter thompson came in the office uh and we'd play uh he's plummeting at that point a little bit he was but he would come to the office and we'd throw football in the halls and knock things over. And Fred Schrewer's once hung from the balcony by his hands on the 28th floor. Oh, my God.

Scared the shit out of everybody at a party. So it was great. It was really fun. And it suited me. I wanted to be countercultural. I wanted to be in the music scene. I'd grown up in North Carolina

and my dad was a mailman and he'd take me to the post office on Saturday to sort mail. I'd take the magazines and the two I cared about were Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. They were my access to the world of sports. Remember?

Those were my two as a kid in the seventies. And you remember you got Sports Illustrated on a Wednesday and read about the USC-UCLA game? Right, four days earlier. Yeah, that you didn't see. Because there was only one game on television. So that was access to that. And then Rolling Stone was the guide to the music scene and the counterculture. And those were the two things that sort of formed me in terms of the world of publishing that and sort of reading a bunch of books. So you were sales initially, and then you moved more into editorial? No, I was secretary initially.

I was an intern. Yeah. So I was hired as an intern and then moved up. No, I moved up to the circulation intern. Yeah. So I was hired. I mean, after you moved up. I was hired as an intern and then moved up. No, I moved up to the circulation department. Okay. I ran newsstand sales for a year or two. I ran subscriptions. I did the business models.

Working directly for a guy named Kent Brownridge, who sort of ran the business for Jan. Yeah. So I would come in as Kent's guy. We'd run the models for what the next three years were going to look like. And Jan's, how difficult is he on a scale of one to ten at that point? Well, he's, it's both, right? Jan is a one and a ten.

If you walk in at the right moment, he couldn't be more charming. He puts his arm around you. He tells you how great you are. And you walk in at the wrong moment. He's difficult arm around you. He tells you how great you are. And you walk in at the wrong moment. He's difficult, moody. And he did, you know, ultimately fire me. We share this in common. I was fired for insubordination. Is that true? Yes, I was. I was the publisher of Us magazine 10 years after I started. And Jan wanted me to do some things which I resisted and said I thought I understood better than he did, forgetting in my mind

that I didn't actually own the magazine he did. And then he showed you the door. I was dismissed. Really? Yeah. I don't think I knew that part. So what happened after Rolling Stone? After Rolling Stone, I needed a job.

So I went and worked for Spin for a year. So some guys in the music business steve swid and um david horowitz had invested in spin so i went to work with bob guccioni jr they were all great to me i mean i was on the rebound uh i was dismissed at rolling stone in january of 1990 and went to work for spin about three weeks later. And how did ESPN happen? ESPN happened because Spin, you know, I had small kids and lived out in the suburbs, and Spin was a bunch of 22-year-olds. And just, it wasn't the right thing for me to do, but it did give me a good transition. And then Disney hired me, got me Michael Linton to come out work in California.

Michael Linton, the future Sony guy? Yeah. Oh. So Michael hired me at Disney to start booking magazine companies. And my first assignment was to manage Disney Adventures, a little pocket-sized magazine for kids based on Topolino in Italy. Yeah. And I was 19, the end of 90 into 91. So I was in publishing there till 97. In 97, 96, I think, Disney bought ABC Cap Cities, which owned ESPN. A guy named Steve Bornstein told Michael Eisner, I want to start a magazine.

And Michael said, we got a magazine guy named Skipper. And he put me together with John Walsh. And we did a prototype with Walter Bernard, with Allen Iverson on the cover of a magazine that was a cross between Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. Oh, that was the initial prototype? Yeah.

I mean, basically. I just remember the every two weeks thing and thinking, oh, you made a big deal from the beginning. We're looking ahead. Things are moving. The internet's coming. We don't want to go backwards. We want to look forward to.

Look, we understood one thing very clearly because it was ESPN, which was because of ESPN, you're getting a magazine on Wednesday to describe what happened at the Masters or the Super Bowl on Saturday or Sunday was ridiculous. Because you'd watched it on SportsCenter ad nauseum for three or four days, and they never budged from being a news magazine so we decided remember the first cover had kobe bryant um eric lindros oh yeah it was all people who were about to become somebody yeah yeah and it was called and had a big next on it. Yeah. And it was a very brash statement that we're next. You know, the old way of doing sports magazines is over. It wasn't really. And we're talking 97, right? It's an interesting time.

It lost March of 98. 98. Interesting time for ESPN because I feel like SportsCenter had broken through. Yeah. In a huge way and created all these stars. And I think the commercials were already going at that point. And the company's moving in this direction of, all right, how do we blow this out in every conceivable way? Which for better or worse defined, I think the next 10 years.

Yeah. I mean, Steve Bornstein really was the guy who had the vision that, look, we're going to create a multimedia company. We want to be in the radio business. We want multiple channels. We want a magazine. Steve desperately wanted a weekly magazine. He wanted to go head to head. He wanted to battle them.

Yeah, he wanted to battle them. Steve was a battler. Yeah. And was a fabulous boss. It was fun. And I and John Walsh convinced him, we're going to go every two weeks. And we went to the printing press that did Rolling Stone every other week. And we hired them, and I actually called my friend, John. We had reconciled and said, John, I got a good deal for you.

We're going to print at the same place, and I bet you we can both save some money. The printer will be busy every other week. And the magazine was exactly like Rolling Stone. We've done the same paper. I went to the same paper supplier. And so one week they printed Rolling Stone, one week they printed, uh, ESPN magazine. And we did also go to the post office. I threw my dad's name around letter carrier from Lexington, North Carolina. And we convinced the post office that we were publishing a weekly magazine. But we were publishing it every other week. Right.

And they granted us the same service that a weekly got. I think it's the first time it had ever happened. Really? And it was expedited service. So we would print on Monday and you would get the magazine by Wednesday, which is what happened with Sports Illustrated. Rolling Stone was printing on Monday, and you'd get it about Saturday. Right. Well, the magazine was, I would say, really successful the first 10 years.

What was the heyday? How much were you making from the magazine? It was at least $20 million, $30 million a year, right? Look, the heyday probably had $150 million in revenue and probably made 30 40 million dollars yeah and it's thrown in the parties and all the other stuff it just flew what was the heyday like mid-2000s because i think i was waiting for it at that point um yeah probably look i oddly enough i have to actually remember this it seems seems wrong, but it was right.

We launched the magazine in March of 1998. And as of January of 2000, I had moved to run ESPN.com. I actually was only there to supervise about, you know, probably 50 issues. And I think Michael Rooney took over at that point. I think he became the next head of ESPN magazine. And I moved out to run what had been called ESPN Sports Net. Right. And they're outsourcing it in Seattle.

It had been done by Starwave. ESPN had bought the rights to it back. They'd had a couple of people running it, and it wasn't going great. ESPN actually wasn't very good. It wasn't. I mean, it was sort of HTML text, and it did scores, and fantasy. The entire internet was pretty bad back then, though. It didn't sound like anybody was running away from the pack. No, everything was ugly.

Yeah. Everything was ugly. I do think that one thing that John Walsh and I brought to it was a magazine sensibility. Yeah. I immediately went in and said, we've got to have photographs, and we've got to have typefaces, and we've got to have layouts so the thing looks good. And I was met by a bunch of guys who came in with data that said, do you know how long this will take to load on dial-up? And I'm like, I don't really care. I said, they're going to figure that technological problem out at some point. And we're going to win because it'll look

great. We'll do photographs and we're going to hire good writers. Well, I remember right around then, I don't know if you were running it at that point, but they convinced Gammons to give up the Boston Globe column completely and just write for the website. And I always felt like that was the first most important moment in sports journalism and the internet because that got somebody like my dad to be like, okay, now I have to figure out how to get on this website because Gammons is there. Remember the Gammons column in the Boston Globe? Gammons was the most important column, yeah. I think it was two pages, was it? It was like 15 minutes long to read. I bought the Boston Globe on Sunday as a New Yorker just to read the Gammons dot, dot, dot.

Here's the most important. It was fabulous. So ESPN gets that. Although that was John Walsh. It really felt like a moment. That was John Walsh, right? John Walsh, Vince Doria, who ran news at ESPN, had been Peter's editor. John Walsh was a close friend.

And John convinced him to come over. Look, it was followed pretty quickly by Hunter Thompson. Well, you launched Page Two, spent some money on it. Ralph Wiley, Halberstam. Halberstam, and pretty quickly, the sports guy. Yeah, not me initially, though. I remember taking it personally. What year was that?

I think Page Two launched in 2000, but you didn't come get me until the spring of 2001. Because I wrote this. It was the second time I did it. It was a better piece. But I remember I did a running diary of making fun of the ESPYs. Yes. And somehow Walsh saw it. I remember that very clearly. I remember that story. And it got passed around yes. And somehow Walsh saw it. I remember that very clearly.

I remember that story. And it got passed around ESPN and Walsh saw it. He was like, oh, where's this guy? And started reading me. And then they asked me to write about, uh, Nomar had blown out his wrist in April, 2001. So they asked me to write a piece about it. I remember that.

So I wrote that. They asked me to write another one. They asked me to write another one. And then eventually I came in and saw Walsh. Yeah. That was all in 2001? Yeah, it was spring 2001. Yeah.

And then- You should feel pretty good about that company, though. Those other guys were easier to find. David Halberstam and Ralph Wiley. You were the first big new voice, right? These guys, we went and fought. They were established voices. Yeah, established voices.

And it gave us credibility. It was smart, because people were like, Hunter Thompson's on the internet? That was a major gimmick at the time. Look, I'm quite proud of the fact that we were the last home for Halberstam, Wiley, and Hunter Thompson.

Their last war basically was on, and then we were the first national platform for you i guess sports guy was national but you know what i mean no i mean but that was a big thing of when i remember you guys hired me officially and i spent five weeks trying to figure out i took i asked for five weeks off because i've been working for like four years straight right and i remember i took five weeks and i really tried to figure out how a national column would work.

Right. Because nobody had really done it. Right. You know, it was like everything was local. Everything was local newspaper columns. Yeah. And it was like, how do I try to hit everybody? So that was when I like really leaned into the pop culture.

Yeah. Again, at that point, the only really national sports columns were in Sports Illustrated. And there were 800 words once a week. Yeah. Rick Riley on the back page. I think he was already on the back page, right? He was.

But it was 800 words once a week and they were really broad. But it still seemed like it seemed like a lot of the stuff should translate across the country.

But it still, there was nobody to point to, which was weird. But the weird thing was being on the same site with all those dudes. Because the Hammerstand was being on the on the same site with all those dudes because the harbors damn is my my breaks of the game is my favorite book ever uh hunter was a legend yep hey it was just ralph wiley i mean all those dudes and it was

you know and then uh leading the page over them i'd be like they're leading with me over halberstam like It was hard to wrap your head around. Well, became, again, I mean it genuinely and sincerely. You know I do. Those guys were really important to us. They gave us credibility. Yeah. But you were the first guy who, in a big way, connected with who our audience was, right?

Just like with all new platforms, it was young, it was kids, right? And it was, at that point, it was overwhelmingly male, just was. It was 90, I forget. We used to be 95% male. And young. And very young. And it connected.

I remember when we were figuring out Grantland, like, I don't know, nine years later, it was kind of the same motto about you launch a site with some big names, but they're not even that it's really the younger people that are going to be the ones that carry the site the big names give you some

recognizability and credibility but the people like Dave Eggers and Gladwell they wrote like once or twice for Grandland but we can put them in the press release you know Dave Eggers was an original magazine guy? For me, it's been

the magazine. Yeah. He and a guy named Zev Barrow came as a pair. I can't remember why, but they wrote some of the notes column stuff up front in the book. I'm proud of that. He just published his eighth novel. Hey, let's take a break to talk about Bud Light.

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Ziprecruiter is the smartest way to hire. Back to John Skipper. When did you feel like the website really was turning into something? Something that could actually be the most relevant place for sports, but also make money? I think we created a great product

and I think it was resonating. And then we did a big deal with Microsoft. For Microsoft, for ESPN to be the sports content on Microsoft when Microsoft was the was the company everybody feared you know there's always a company everybody fears and in those days it was Microsoft and uh now it's seven companies yeah well they got him Yusef Mehdi a good guy and suddenly ESPN went from seven million uniques a month to like 20 million uniques. And we leapfrogged, I think it was Sportsline. Remember Sportsline?

Yeah, Sportsline was a big competitor. They were the leader. Well, they had a lot of fantasy, I remember. Yahoo and Sportsline had more fantasy. Yahoo, and I made the mistake of, because we were making money on fantasy. Yeah. And I didn't want to give up the money yeah because it was a very small business i think espn.com was like 22 million 25 million dollars revenue uh in 2000 and i think fantasy was three or four or five million of that so i didn't want

to give it up big mistake because um uh when we went free with Fantasy was the next leap. Yeah. And we made the calculation that people got the content. We then were, we partied company with Microsoft because new management came in and they wanted us to pay them. Yeah. To be on Microsoft. And I said, I think people will come stay with us. That was when MSsn.com was,

a lot of people had emails there. Yes. So you would go to their front page to get your email and they would be pumping like four stories and it was always ESPN was one of the four. Yes. And then we lost that traffic. We lost that traffic,

but we didn't actually ever lose traffic. We stayed at 20, 25 million. Yeah. 30, 40, 50. And now it's frequently doing 100 million. I remember the first time we ever hung out was the Patriots-Rams Super Bowl, ironically. Yes. It was in New Orleans.

And you wanted to have lunch with me. So it was me, you, and Walsh. And at the time, I had just written this piece that I thought was funny. But everyone in New Orleans was mad at me. Remind me. Because I had made written this piece that I thought was funny, but everyone in New Orleans was mad at me. Because I had made fun of New Orleans. I'd written this piece about how making fun of New Orleans, but I loved it anyway, just like the city. And the locals got really mad. And it was, you know, I felt like my life was like in danger practically. And then during that whole time, we had lunch and we talked. And then I think the next time i saw you was when kimo was trying to hire me uh and we we had some event and i was explaining to you why i

wanted to why no this isn't right actually there was another time i i had a bad contract and you gave me a raise that was the second time yeah you put me in espn magazine. Yep. We had a big talk. It's funny. You fixed it. I think there was some ambivalence about whether you wanted to be in the magazine or not. Or was there? Because of the word count. Yeah.

Yeah. So then the third time was the Kimmel thing. Yep. And I remember you handled it in a way. And it was actually a really good lesson for me as a boss and as somebody who's in charge of people. You weren't super protective of it. You heard it out. You wanted to know why I wanted to do it,

and then you tried to help me make it happen. And it was one of those things that I don't know if you did it intentionally or not, but after that, I was like, that's my guy. If that guy needs me, I got him. Well, it turned out to be a good experience for you, right? It was great. I remember coming into the, you know, you'd have me on the show, and'd come and we'd hang out a little bit and I'd go see the show. And it gave you experience.

It allows you to do what you're doing now. And look, my sense is you should try to accommodate people when you can. Yes. And at the time, of course, you know, I was personally involved, right? And I wanted to have the long- The fact that it was on ABC was helpful. I think it was NBC. I don't know if maybe you couldn't have been as a comment.

Probably wouldn't have done it. But I did do at least one deal for somebody who wanted to go to NBC at one point. True. But what was interesting about that, though, was it still felt like the internet at that point was a launching pad to go do other things. Because it was like, what am I going to write a column on the internet for 20 years? And then when I came out here, and then you realize how big ESPN.com was. And so many people knew the column and knew page two.

And in Boston, you're in this little bubble. You have no idea. You don't realize it's like everybody's getting the internet. So at some point I was like, did I make a mistake giving up that column? Like I had a pretty big platform. I didn't realize it was as big as it was. Um, and it was, you didn't ultimately, because when you came back, it was still there. Right. And you'd had a different kind of experience, got you to LA. No, that all of it was great. It's funny. I have a hard time remembering the sequencing of it, but yeah, I do remember that. I came back, yeah, I came back in 04 and then stayed on after that.

So, but it felt like 04, at that point, you talked about the dial-up and all that stuff. The internet had really come into play at that point. Now the websites are loading faster, the content's better, it looks nicer, and everybody's in the internet now. Yeah. And we'd figured out, we'd figured out how to use the magazine and the television

and all kind of work together to promote everything. I mean, again, it was the culmination of Steve's sort of vision that we're going to be a multimedia group company. Steve had left to run,

I think he went to ABC and then he was running Go.com. And George was the boss. And 05 is when I became the head of content at ESPN. So it really, and by the way, four was the year I ran sales at ESPN. So in four, they sort of, I actually wasn't there for, one of the years you were at Kimmel. I actually had gone to run the sales group at ESPN, then came back to be the head of content when you came back. And you had, so 05 is an interesting ESPN year because at that point, they've expanded left and right and try to do all these things. It was the first time there was like a backlash that you could kind of feel against ESPN did left and right and tried to do all these things. It was the first time there was like a backlash that you could kind of feel against ESPN. And it was the 25th anniversary.

Yeah. The Gatorade. ESPN The Zone. Yep. And probably seven other things I can't remember. But it was the first time people were like, hey, fuck ESPN. They're in my life too much. I think it's hard to be cuddly.

Yeah. Right? When you just keep getting bigger and bigger. And the company was extraordinarily successful financially, and it was in people's lives, and we're starting new channels, and overreached in a couple areas. People don't really need to eat at ESPN. That was a bad idea, ultimately.

You don't need to eat there. There's the phone. We forgot the phone the phone oh my gosh the phone the phone belatedly worked out

because a lot of the technology for the phone ended up being used in all these different ways basically it provided the

infrastructure the technology and a lot of the people who ultimately ESPN mobile mobile ESPN the leader but it was it was a disaster when we did it And a lot of the people who ultimately named ESPN Mobile, Mobile ESPN, the leader.

But it was a disaster when we did it. And I was in charge of it. I actually had to get through that. But to the company's credit, you could have a disaster. We convinced ourselves that people would buy an ESPN phone. And it was an overreach. You didn't need to call with an ESPN phone or eat at an ESPN restaurant. I actually feel like if it had been called

like Blade or something like that, it might have had a better chance. There was a phone called Blade. Oh, Razor. Razor, whatever. But if it didn't have ESPN in the name

and it was just like this phone made by ESPN, it might have had a better chance. Well, if we'd have gone and done a deal with a telephone company to do a branded phone, we...

That was the better idea. There was a little bit of hubris involved, and I was part of it, which was we can do anything, and we underestimated that the phone companies were quite formidable, and they were not going to allow a branded phone, where we actually— Oh, so you felt like you got boxed out a little bit. Oh, yeah. Look, this was partly responsible, not completely,

but partly responsible. Remember, this is the days when it was like, if you want to get four phones for your family, they'll be free. And the next week, we ran an ad in the Super Bowl

that said, or you could spend $400 on an ESPN phone. Everybody's like, why would I spend $400 on an ESPN phone? What are you guys doing? The AT&T will give me four phones for free.

Yeah. And it was all based on, this is ridiculously obscure, was based on, I think it was an act of Congress, that number portability. That you had to be able to take your phone number from one carrier to the other. And lots of

people believe that that would make people switch carriers more often, and instead the carriers went, we'll give you free phones, we'll give you six months, and so nobody switched. And the good news is we did it for about nine months, lost a couple hundred million bucks and moved on. But somehow got intelligence from it that might have actually made it worth other than the embarrassment of just failing with a phone yeah but it was okay we moved on

and you hit the money back then pardon yeah though esp had the money in 2006 seven it takes some chances they did and by the way uh if you don't take chances and fail every now and then it's a mistake and and probably uh if there was hubris it's because we hadn't actually made many missteps right so you make a few missteps and now you had a good run after 2005 ESPN had a fabulous run it was no longer cuddly right it was no longer and it was difficult and it's been a little bit thematic in my life it became difficult to be countercultural right ESPN was the disruptor they were having fun they were uh they were cool well you become the yankees you become the yankees hard to be cool

yeah right i mean some ways the cubs were cooler when when they were cuddly uh and when uh they became winners it's not quite as cuddly the cubs were are so cuddly. Well, I remember. So I signed a new deal in 07. And then in 08, that was like the first time we ever battled over something. I wanted to have Obama on my podcast. And there was some ESPN rule in place. And we should have let you. But yeah, there was a rule. It was like spring.

And by the way, nobody knew what the F of podcast was at that point, barely. I had had it for a year, but it was like very early stages. It's funny. I'd forgotten about that. And I guess. I remember calling you and being like, this guy's going to be the president. And I can have him on my podcast. But there were all these other political thing.

I've gotten over it. Maybe like three years ago. It's interesting. I never thought of that as sort of the derivation of a thing that ended up running through my presidency, right? Which is, is ESPN a political organization? That was the touch point for it. Because that was the first time where it was like, well, you have to have equal time. It's like, well, how am I going to—this guy just wants to come on my podcast and shoot the shit about sports.

Yeah. And I probably was sympathetic to we should do it. And George Bodenheimer was president at the time. John Walsh was very doctrinal about that. We don't do this. Yeah. And I probably chafed against that a little bit, as you did. And that's funny.

It clearly was the first chapter in what became, you know, Trump tweeting about, you know, ESPN's political. It was the start of a 10-year something. Yeah. Yeah. And then I remember I was having some issues with jokes I could get in and my schedule. And we ended up, at some point point we had this big meeting in,

uh, in the LA live building, which wasn't done yet. And I wasn't sure if I was going to get fired and we had this big power. And we quickly realized like, Oh yeah, we should, let's figure this out.

It took like five minutes, but it was, it was the first time I remember there was some acrimony, but then it was fine after that for a long time. Well, the book, you remember the book, the ESPN book, um, I told the story in the book, I think. Did you? I mean then it was fine after that for a long time. Well, the book. You remember the book? The ESPN book. The ESPN book.

I told the story in the book, I think. Did you? But I remember the book when John Moss called me and he's like, I've marked like 55 places in the book that we need to go over. We need to talk to Bill about what's in the book. And look, it was hard. ESPN wasn't. It was an upstart and a disruptor. It was never particularly countercultural, right?

Yeah. Everybody always agreed the grooviest thing about ESPN in some ways was the commercials. The SportsCenter commercials were much more subversive than the actual content on the air. Right. And it gave ESPN the halo of subversive, disruptive, but when you actually watched it, it was much more solidly grounded in sort of journalism and ethics and,

and rules. And this is the way we do things here. And. By the way, that book, that book came out in 2011. Cause it was right after we had launched grantland and walsh was walsh was there and got the copy of the book and went into an empty office for six straight

hours and read the book and we would stand outside the door and just listen to him cackling and talking to himself about it oh oh that oh that never happened and just like it's just running commentary i wish i had we didn't have apple phones back then. I would have just been taping it. I read the manuscript of the book in a Jeep driving from Johannesburg. Oh Jesus, you're on vacation? Blom Fontaine.

No, I was at the world cup in South Africa. Oh. And, and got the manuscript. And on the way from, I'd read it once before, but read it a second time going,

it was from Johannesburg to Blomfontein. And my recollection is that takes about six hours. And I read the entire book. I didn't have too many objections to it, right? I mean. He did. Jim Miller wrote it. He did a good job.

I gave one interview that like two weeks later, I was like, oh, shit. He's probably going to use a lot of that stuff. But I think a lot of people, the thing I didn't realize was a lot of people were in that situation. Yeah. Where you end up, especially if you get comfortable with somebody, you say three things, and those end up being the three things. Yeah. It was a good book.

It was a good book. It was fun. Remember, you wanted to actually, which I thought was a good idea, establish a hall of fame that was alive. Sportsbook Hall of Fame. Yeah. Well, it was alive. There would be 50 players and you'd actually have to take- Oh, the pyramid. Yeah, the pyramid.

You actually had to take somebody out at some point. Like a cocktail. Which is a fabulous concept. Yeah. which like a like a cocktail club a fabulous concept yeah um but a little too a little too difficult for the

the leagues yeah to deal with so 07 I had signed a new deal and part of the deal was to get more involved with the content side

yeah which I was really excited about and sent you a memo you and Walsh mhm for and I had the title in the memo right the 30 for 30 mhm which I was really excited about, and sent you a memo, you and Walsh, and I had the title in the memo, the 30 for 30,

but the premise was basically, it was two things. HBO has taken sports documentaries. Why are we allowing that to happen? We put out a ton of content. Nobody knows which ones to watch. We're putting out too much stuff. And then our anniversary is coming up and we love celebrating anniversaries.

And this was two years earlier. Our anniversary was 09. Yeah. So it was like, something about this makes sense. Yeah. And you were like, go develop it.

Yep. And by the way, I think we remember that the, you mentioned it before, the 25th anniversary hadn't gone over very well, right? It was a bunch of lists and the 25 greatest. I'm sorry, this is the 30th anniversary.

Yeah, this was the 30th. But I think part of the reason for the idea was reaction to let's do something that'll be fun and different. And I do remember talking about this will be for the fans, right? It'll be a treat, a surprise. It won't be a bunch of lists.

And here's the greatest ranking of the last 30 years. And you had the concept, let's do 30 films for 30 years. Well, I remember initially it was 10, 10, and 10. And I think it was like 10 on players, 10 on teams, 10 on events. And then eventually we just threw it out. Once we started meeting with filmmakers, they would always come up with their own idea. We'd be like, oh oh yeah, that's cool. Let's do that. Well, you remember we sat in a room

at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park. Bunch of people. Well, that's when we didn't know if it was going to happen or not. Right. Because some people didn't want it to happen. Some people didn't want it to happen. I was in charge of content. We were doing so well financially. We had enough money to be able to launch an E60, to be able to hire

writers and do things. And remember, we put a big wax board up and sort of said, gee, you got to sort of look at the 80s, 90s, and zeros and sort of think about that. Here's sports. You got to think about it. And don't forget NASCAR. Don't forget women's tennis. And we said, it's got to be diverse and it's got to have a variety of themes. And we decided it's going to be a mosaic. It's not going to be a history or a chronological series. But if you watch these 30 films, you'll have a pretty good idea of the things that mattered. These aren't the best 30 stories.

They're just 30 stories. 30 stories. And we hired 30 filmmakers, which was a direct, you know, again, like the magazine being different, being next relative to Sports Illustrated. The HBO at that time was a standard. And you got to figure out an alternative. And they're pretty arrogant too. Well, you know, when you're killing it.

Because we were launching our thing and they were just like, oh, that's great. Good luck with that. Yeah. We're still the leaders. I do remember it also was spectacular financially. We had a contract. Somebody had the idea.

It was Connor. Connor. Look, every filmmaker has a sport. We don't want to negotiate with each person. Yeah, and every filmmaker has a sport story they want to tell. One of the very first ones we signed up was Barry Levinson, who had grown up in Baltimore and had the story of the Baltimore Colts band that never quit playing, even though the Colts,

Ursae took the Colts to Indianapolis. The band stayed behind, and on opening day, they would show up in the stadium and play. And Barry Levinson did a spectacular film. I cannot remember the name of it. It was the band that wouldn't die. Yeah, the band That Wouldn't Die. Well, once we got him, then we could go get other people.

Because that was the thing we realized. It was like, all right, we had Barry Levinson, Pete Bird, Mike Tolan. But then you'd have the next meeting. You'd be like, we have these three guys. They'd be like, really? Yeah. And then it was like validated. And we had one contract.

And we told everybody, you have to sign it. And it was, you're going to make a documentary for $500,000. We own the rights to everything in perpetuity throughout the universe on every device ever known to man or ever invented by man in the future or man or woman. By the way, people thought that was too high back then. Now it's like a bargain. There was, look. You took some heat on that one. It was $15 million.

Yeah. And people are like, you're going to spend $15 million? And it was, yeah. It was actually probably even more than that. Because you throw in a little extra. It was marketing. It was $20 million. I think the interesting thing about 30 for 30 is we never, ever realized that they would be rewatchable and that they could just be thrown on the schedule. Yeah.

That was not one person at any point in the planning thought somebody would watch the Fab Five eight times. We just didn't see it. No. Well, the company had done one enormous project, Sports Century, right? The turn of the century. And that content, other than being on Classic all the time, wasn't really reusable, right?

True. It basically became ESPN Classic. So the company had no experience with the idea that it would be evergreen content that you could put up on ESPN 1 and 2 forever. But they still run them, and they're still fabulous. They still hold up. It's crazy. I do remember the next year kind of going, well, we should keep doing films. And again, I can't remember, and we were going to call it something different. We spent a long time figuring out what the right brand is.

ESPN Films Presents. I was trying to throw my body in front of it. Yeah, I think you did, and we decided, why in the world would we just not get called? No, we did it for like a few, we did a few that were called ESPN Films Presents. You're right. I think what happened was new people came in charge

and who weren't affiliated with 30 for 30, and then, you know, you want your own thing at that point. But eventually, I think we were putting out these documentaries and people were just calling them 30 for 30s, and they weren't even 30 for 30. And then, you know, you want your own thing at that point. But eventually, I think we were putting out these documentaries and people were just calling them 30 for 30s and they weren't even 30 for 30. So at that point we realized, all right, this is stupid. And look, you had a little thing

where the company was in Bristol and was about Bristol. And this was kind of a group of people who were in New York. True. And they'd never been sort of a renegade. The magazine in some ways was a renegade project, right?

Built in New York, but that was okay. Cause it was publishing. Now you're suddenly making television and you're making television with a bunch of people who were in New York and not up in Bristol. And, um, I think there were some people who thought we should be doing it in

Bristol. And, and, uh, I remember when we launched SportsCenter Los Angeles, it was controversial. And there were people who didn't think that we should be overt, that we were actually doing this from Los Angeles. Right. Because remember, ESPN, they didn't really, other than Bristol University, they didn't kind of say from Bristol, Connecticut.

True. Eric Rydholm was producing PTI in Washington, D.C., bristol university they didn't kind of say from bristol connecticut true they eric ride home was producing um pti in washington dc and it never really said by the way i never succeeded in that i always wanted to sort of show a picture of the capital before before uh part of the interruption and be about gee we're in washington dc we're in los angeles i did insist on it for dan lebatard show in mi, right? We're going to do Miami. Which I think is tough.

We'll go on the beach and we'll show the beach. And people are like, you don't want to do that. Yeah, I do think. I'm not quite sure why, but. Yeah, I remember when we were launched in 30 for 30, like they weren't promoting it really that much. Yeah. Which I think weirdly worked in our benefit,

but I always felt like there was a little resentment toward it. So then 09, my basketball book came out too websites going great i end up doing another deal and that's when the grantland thing happened and that was that was uh 2010 i had this idea for a website talked you in washington to it at the Trump Soho, ironically. Is that where it was? Yeah. At the Trump Soho. At the Trump Soho. Because that was at ESP Hotel. Walsh would stay at the Trump.

Walsh always stayed at the Trump International, right at Columbus Circle. Yeah. This was at Trump Soho for some reason. Yeah. And it was basically, hey, let's try to do this website that has Longform, all this other weird stuff. We'll find some new talent. And you were like, hey, let's try to do this website that has long form, all this other weird stuff. We'll find some new talent.

And you were like, great, let's go. Yeah. And we did. And it was fabulous. Look, I think my job was still the head of content. You were one of the most important voices we had. And right, I always started the discussions by saying, what do you want to do? Yeah.

Let's figure out what you want to do next. Cause everything you'd done, it helped us. And, um, you want to start a website. I'm like, let's start a website. It was also not universally popular that we were going to spend money on a sort of, again, kind of counter-cultural kind of literary. And it was a moment in time too, when people were kind of going, long form is dead. You know, it was—

The blogs thing was shorter, shorter, faster, more, more, more. And— Seemed to be the model, which we didn't agree with. I've always believed. I still don't believe it. I still believe that there is a large audience for long-form storytelling. Let's take a break to talk about Robinhood. It's an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission

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Robinhood, giving listeners of the Bill Simmons Podcast a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help you build your portfolio. Sign up at simmons.robinhood.com. Back to John Skipper. The one thing that's changed, I think, as we head into this next decade is so many people read now on phones that it is just really hard to read. I think that's why the ringer has, I mean, it's different for a lot of reasons than Grantland, but it's just that site was designed for desktops. In 2010, we were like, we want people to read it on their computer. There wasn't even iPads back then. No.

Look, I've made a really hard transition for me towards reading the New York Times overwhelmingly on my phone. Yeah, it's crazy, right? And it's crazy, right? And it's crazy. So when they do one of those investigative stories, it leads into a double truck in the newspaper, which is 6,000, 8,000 words. I can't really get through it on the phone. I mean, I may love, there's a big story today on Purdue Pharma, right?

And I read it on my phone. You're like turning it sideways. And it's hard. I on my phone. You're like turning it sideways. And it's hard. I did not get to the end of it. If I had the paper, I am pretty sure that probably is on the front page. I'm pretty sure it probably is page. I'm making it up seven and eight. And it's a spectacular piece of investigative journalism. It is one of the things that should worry everybody, right, is that it's hard to do that in a three-minute video.

There is something about a long-form piece that somebody has spent months on, read documents, that sort of matters culturally and should matter to the citizens of the country. We'll move on from this. But I don't know how you do that on a phone. I can't. I was riding a bike this morning. Then we sound like old guys on the couch a little bit,

but I agree with you. It's just like, it's the way things are going and there's no way to stop it, but I'm with you. It's not the same reading experience, but then, you know, I watch it with my kids. The phone is just popping up and they're on Instagram. There are all these different things. They're on their text, Snapchat. I'll never forget being at South by Southwest in the groovy hotel and going to the concierge.

And I think almost as a moment of pride, I'm like, you have the Sunday times are like, no, we don't, but we, we do have a digital subscription. If you put your room number and you watch it, I'm like, no, no, I want to go find the paper. I remember going to get the paper, walking through the lobby, and feeling like I was— Yeah, you're holding a newspaper. Yeah, I was holding a newspaper, and I felt like people were staring at me like, why are you wearing a zoot suit? So we launched Grandland.

The next year, George decides he's leaving leaving and you get that job. January of 2012. So yeah, we launched. You had a feeling you were going to get that job, but we didn't know for sure. I didn't have any feeling that George was going to retire. That was shocking. I felt that I was best equipped at the company to be the next president. But I remember saying to George, George, as long as you stay, I'm fine.

I love this job. Yeah. But we had to, when you did your annual review, actually there was like a box you had to fill in and say, what's your next job do you want? And I remember saying, if you leave, I want to be president. Yeah. If you don't, I'm fine.

I'll keep doing this job for the next 10 years. It's a great job. In some ways, it's a better job than being the president. I would say always, except financially. Look, it's interesting. Somebody recently asked me, at what moment did you kind of have the most fun? The magazine is right up there. Starting the website's right up there. In success, you will inevitably get into jobs that are more financially rewarding, that have more influence, and those things are intoxicating and matter. It changes where your family lives. It changes what you do, but they're hard to be fun because they are so overwhelming. Well, I remember you called me and you told me that this was going to happen.

Yeah. And my instant reaction, because I'm an only child, I'm selfish, was like, this is bad. This is, whatever the current range of right now is going great. I love it the way it is right now. And you're like, no, no, this is great. This is going to be awesome. I'm moving up. I'm going to be in charge of everything.

This is all good. I'm like, well. Yeah, I remember that conversation. I was like, well, but it's really good now. I like it. I like the way things are going today. It turned out to be right about that. Yeah, you're right.

I did. I love the job. It was really fun. Within a year, I remember watching from afar, and it just seemed like, it seemed like you were on a plane all the time. And I would call Denise and be like, where's Skipper?

She's like, Oh, he's in, he's in Italy talking to the Syria, whatever. And then he's flying to Zimbabwe. And then he has to go to Antarctica to find the, the X games,

Antarctica. And then he's flying to France. And I'm like, all right, we'll tell him, tell him I said hi. Yeah. But that was your job. I mean, that job's crazy.

And you had what, 8,000 employees? Oh, we had. 9,000? I don't, I can't quite remember. It was always misleading because if you sort of added up all the contractors and the people who were in trucks and, you know, it's, and by the way, it is a responsibility. There's 20,000 people, 25,000 people whose livelihoods depend on ESPN.

Yeah. And then they have families. So I always felt that burden that, oh, my gosh, we're responsible for people's colleges and houses. And that's a good thing. And I have a serious work ethic and it worked all the time and, uh, and it was fun. Didn't leave a lot of time for, uh, calling my old pals and, and, and didn't leave a lot of time. I had trouble consuming

the content. Remember we were doing 50, 20,000 and 30,000 and 50,000 and 65,000 and 85,000 live hours a year. And we were producing at one point over a thousand pages of journalism a day. And you understood that we were doing, I forget once I figured out we were doing eight, nine hours of television every hour, as well as the equivalent of what used to be the Sunday Times every day. So all you could do was read a tiny fraction of it. People ask me about other programs or things, and I'm like, I never watched Friends. I never watched anything because if I was in front of a television, I had to watch ESPN. Right.

Because it would be people who were working. So you start losing your feel. You do, sort of, because you're really not, you can't really be in touch with everything that's going on and be at the cutting edge of things because you just don't have time. And you don't have time to read everything. And you're going to meetings and you're doing budgets and you're involved in disciplinary actions.

Somebody's unhappy or you're trying to renew a contract, a rights deal. Well, the thing that I thought, you know, in the moment, it felt like two things were going on that I wish you had seen. One was,

it was crazy that you didn't have like a chief of staff. Yeah. I remember talking to you about that. I was like, how do you not have somebody who just preps for every, and you're like, no, no, my own guy. But it seemed like you should have had that sidekick

who just like, all right, you have a meeting with AT&T at 10. Yeah. Here's everything you need to know. Here are all the bullet points. But you wanted to like do everything. I was sort of stubbornly unwilling to adapt in some ways to corporate life.

You remember that commercial where the guy in the corner office muses, you know, I want to stick it to the man? Yeah. And this young aide says, well, sir, you actually are the man. So I had this countercultural streak, this anti-establishmentarian streak, and I prided myself. I'm the only guy running a big business who has one assistant. Right. And no chief of staff. All my peers at Disney had two assistants

and something that would be called the assistant to the president. Right. And I'm like, no, I don't need all that. I can figure all this out. I was wrong. And I ended up with more things to handle than you could. I prided myself on returning every phone call, which at some point I did.

I remember David Stern got mad at me one time for not returning his phone call. And it actually forced me into making sure that I either returned every call or I would have my assistant call and say, you can't call today, I'll call tomorrow. And I did every email every day. Well, I remember one time I went in your office and you were like, look at this. And it was an empty inbox. You're like, I've answered every email. And I had like 4,000 unread emails. I was like, how are you doing this? You did it all the time. Yeah. Eventually not healthy. I did. Eventually not healthy. And I did have a rule

I would urge on everybody. I never opened an email and put it in a folder to deal with later. You just did it right away. I agree with that. That's an aggrament. He's unbelievable. I at one point thought there must be some like secret operation where a bunch of people are answering his emails while he ate lunch now because i'm like he's got to be eating lunch right now but i send him something and he answers me right away he sleeps like three hours he's uh he's you know i i dealt with jeffrey katzenberg when i first got to espn who was this who sleeps no hours who is like amazingly efficient i mean he and and bob get more stuff done, I think, than anybody.

Yeah. I don't know how he does notes on Star Wars and goes to the park and checks out the new ride. I mean, it really is an extraordinary big job. I don't know how people do it. The other thing that I was worried about was you didn't have like, you inherited a lot of people. That became your inner circle. Yeah. And I always felt like, even in the moment,

like you've got to create your own inner circle. Yeah. Like lots of things, right? The good and the bad is the same thing, right? So the fact that George had a staff that had been there forever and was stable was great, but it had the double edge of it. Most of them became sort of my guys. Yeah.

But I didn't really change things up. Because I remember Walsh saying, Skipper's got six months, and then that just becomes what your team is. And I was like, really? He was like, yeah, he's got six months. He's not wrong. I mean, look, people go in this sort of 100-day theory

that you got 100 days to sort of look around and figure out what to do, and then you better do it because I guess it's the 100 days and then the six months that Walsh was talking about. If you don't do anything, then you're where you are. Unless you're Trump, then it's just every 20 days. You just change like three people. But yeah, I remember the politics definitely got dicier because you had people grabbing territories.

And I was so naive with a lot of this stuff. And I never realized from my end, I was considered to be close to you which was bad for me and well i created some some resentments and yeah it was like fuck that guy yeah um but the first time i really felt it was that time with the uh when uh when magic left countdown and then i think the new york times wrote a story or somebody wrote a story about that we had had this power battle. Oh, right, right, right. And I was like, what the fuck? I love magic. And that was the first time.

And then I remember you and I got mad at each other about it. But I was like, this is insane. Why does this exist? Why would somebody do this? But now I look back, I was like, man, I was naive. I should have been more aware of this stuff. Yeah, again, like the same thing. Naivete has a certain charm and incense to it,

but I was naive about some of the things. You mentioned the politics thing. I was sort of naive, right? I'm a little bit of an idealist and wanted to change the world. We tried to use the espies to change the world a little bit. I believe my own rhetoric that, look, there's, we're not playing politics. You know, we're involved in diversity and tolerance and opportunity for everybody. And how can that be political?

It's been politicized in this country. But I didn't believe that celebrating the rights of people to have whatever, to be who who they were was a good thing. How could you be against that? You know, if Bruce Jenner felt that he was Caitlyn Jenner, who's to say that he should deny himself that? Right. And it was a little naive that a lot of the world doesn't think that. I think, and especially for me, ESPN side, people were like, can you guys just show us games and highlights?

And it's not. And I don't think, I was with you on pretty much all of this stuff. But I also, like, I look at what ESPN is now, and it does make more sense as a business. It's like, here's sports, here are highlights, here's some shows about people talking about sports. We're going to stay out of your way. Yeah.

We're good. Yeah. I have some level of sympathy for people who are like, you know, I want to watch sports. It's a retreat. I used to hear it from George.

He'd say, look, people won't respite from all the controversy and stuff that's going on. The hard part was we were a news organization. And ESPN is a hard thing to compartmentalize. And people want to compartmentalize it.

We wanted to be everything. Back to the Steve thing. We wanted to be a news organization. We wanted to be the leading producer of games. We wanted to be journalists. We wanted to be opinionists. We wanted to let Stephen A. Smith talk and let Don Van Natta do investigative reports. And we wanted to do it and have Bill Simmons have fun and produce an alternative website. It sort of felt like you could use

the big umbrella of ESPN to do anything. And for some people, it's back to 2004, right, when it's no longer cuddly. And when you had the sort of politics of polarization and alienation, you suddenly were forced to pick sides. And there's not many people who span both sides. Sports actually has the ability to do that. Nobody doesn't like sports. And, in fact, a lot of the biggest sports fans tend to be fairly conservative.

Right. They tend to be in the Southeast and the Midwest. Well, I remember 2013 in the summer, it was like the ESPYs, I forget who hosted it, but I wasn't sure

if I wanted to do a second season of Countdown and we had dinner. Yeah. And at that point, ESPN was at like the peak of its powers. It was making

an incredible amount of money. We had really no competitor at all and a ton of influence and we were doing cool stuff. Like, I do feel like the stretch from like 2009 to 2013, I still stand by it.

The company was super creative. Like, 30 to 30 and Grantland, stuff like that. Like, nobody else was doing this. E60. E60.

We gave Wright Thompson an issue of the magazine to do a thing on New Orleans. I mean, it kind of felt like he could do anything. Yeah. And I remember Fox was coming.

And this is one of the reasons we like each other because you were like, these guys are, I'm going to, I'm going to destroy these guys. These guys think they're going to compete with us. I'm going to ruin them. And I was like, these guys are, I'm going to destroy these guys. These guys think they're going to compete with us. I'm going to ruin them.

And I was like, yeah. I can't, I remember it was in August. I can't remember what year. Yeah, it was like July or August. July or August. Yeah, no, and look, we were, I used to tell people, well, I'm a Southerner, but I'm William Tecumseh Sherman, you know, when it comes to business, I want to scorch the earth.

And our idea of scorch the earth is we're going to get the rights to everything. I mean, good luck figuring out how to program 8,760 hours when there's no ACC available and there's no NBA available and there's no U.S. Open available and there's no Wimbledon available. And, you know, I think we did understand early at ESPN that live rights are going to be ascendant. I do know that when I got my content job in October 2005, George was unbelievably supportive. And I said, George, we just need to start buying rights. Yeah. And buy things.

And you didn't even know you had all the competitors that you look at 2019. Didn't have any competitors. There's competitors everywhere. We bought things that we had to start new channels to put them on, right? We did an SEC deal and got everything. It's at one game every week.

What was the best move? What was the worst move? Because I actually think the best move. And I said this in the moment was NBA. And people were like, wow, they paid so much for NBA. I'm like,

no, they didn't. It's the NBA has most of the famous athletes we have. And it's about to go global. The NBA is so ascendant and the, it's a long-term deal and it's a spectacular deal. I don't, it's, it's a spectacular deal. It's criticism I bristle at because it's like, exactly what would you have had us do?

He overpaid. It's like you only can overpay if you don't need something or if there's nobody else who'll pay that much money. And there were at least two other big companies that would have paid that much money. Yeah. I mean, you look at Fox and Football in 94. Why would you want to give somebody else this giant asset that they could turn their business around? You didn't. I mean, we—

I thought the MLB was an overpay, though. I remember we talked about that at the time, just because I felt like baseball was becoming localized. Look, I don't regret doing that deal. Baseball is part of the heart and soul of ESPN. I pushed hard to dominate the regular season. If I had to do over again, I would try to buy some playoffs. And now Fox has got the World Series, so I think 26. And being in the baseball postseason would have been a good idea.

And we bought it. I remember I was so proud because we had 100 regular season games. Because it's literally eating up innings, no pun intended. Yeah. No, and it still is very important. You know, it's a lot of highlights. I would have rather had the soccer. If it was like my salary cap.

The World Cup? I think there was a moment there where you just could have had, and you love soccer more than anybody, where you could have just had soccer. It would have been like all the soccer is here. Yeah. The issue was before over the top, there was no place to put it. Right?

We bought the English Premier League game that was the first game on Saturday morning. That was the first time I think the English Premier League had been on national television in the United States. And by the way, people thought it was nuts. Because remember, we had hunting and fishing on Saturday morning when I got the job ahead of content. And I didn't want hunting and fishing on in the morning. And we bought the English Premier League to put on before game day. I said, oh, it was great. You would get up in the morning and you'd watch Liverpool play, and then you'd go to college game day. It was great. Yeah. In the moment, it made no sense, but then it immediately made sense once people saw it.

But then without any place to put it, we couldn't buy the whole league. And Richard Scudamore, who ran the Premier League at the time, wanted to sell the whole package, and NBC smartly bought it. I regretted that. I regretted we didn't figure that out. But it was pre-over-the-tops. You couldn't really put games on broadband. What about an Akanda Super Bowl? It really wasn't possible.

It wasn't like we made a decision not to get it. I mean, when we did the last NFL deal, ESPN is getting so many distributor fees. There was no rationale for us to put those games on ABC. Yeah. And the NFL was non-negotiable. They would not agree to give us Super Bowl and put it on ESPN. And we were so ESPN-centric that I don't think we even ever thought of, you know, we'll put it on ABC. We'll put the Super Bowl on ABC.

I think they're thinking that way now. Yeah, I think so too. And it's smart. And I was probably, we were so ESPN myopic that we always wanted to take the NBA and put it on ESPN. Well, this is a good segue to when we started having problems. The NFL. Uh-huh.

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slash BS. Back to you, John Skipper. I think the genesis of it was probably some stuff with me being unhappy with some stuff that happened with Countdown because I had not wanted to go back and you and I weren't spending as much time together. Very little.

And you know all of a sudden it gets a little ornery and then that leads to I do the podcast said the stuff about Goodell and then you have to suspend me. Yeah. look when we- You left me a very angry answer machine message,

which I erased. Good, thank you very much. Because you're my friend. I'll be like Nick Nolte or somebody. It was like a Christian Bale type. Yeah, no. You were so mad at me. Yeah.

I think you're the maddest anyone's ever been at me. I think you and Jamel Hill were the beneficiaries of two of the very few temper tantrums I ever had. I have very few temper tantrums. Yeah. But that was one of them. Mostly because we were no longer dealing with each other day to day. So it was like I always saw all the work you did. Yeah. But we weren't other day to day so it was like i always saw all the work you did yeah but we weren't dealing day to day so when you would pop back up into my life it was because

it was some kind of problem and it's like damn and i got you know a full day already now i'm gonna spend the next three hours trying to figure out how to deal with this which is something that i now identify with yeah yeah as management you're now the man. I get it. Yeah. I get it. And look, we were trying- I will say in that case,

we had done, Jalen and I had done like a six hour video shoot that day and we'd also done this podcast and I hadn't actually heard what I said. I wish I had heard it because if I had listened to it, there's one part

I just would have taken out and it would have made a lot easier. I stand by the Goodell lying about stuff part. But the hard part about like, I don't even know what I was saying with like challenging my bosses. It was kind of incoherent. Yes. It was basically, and I dare anybody to do anything.

Which is just stupid. And of course you- As Kyle knows, we take stuff out of the podcast all the time. You push the envelope and then you- It's funny how. And of course, you... As Kyle knows, we take stuff out of the podcast all the time. You push the envelope and then you... It's funny how you remember these things. I was standing on a sidewalk in Raleigh, North Carolina, trying to visit some friends of mine and yelling into the phone at you.

And you did. You said, look, we put the damn thing up. I didn't have time to listen to it. And yeah, in retrospect,'t i didn't have time to listen to it and yeah in retrospect uh i probably shouldn't have challenged i don't think i don't think you ever said uh apologize for the remark i will never apologize for that but um and so then so then when i got suspended you didn't you had somebody else tell me so then i I was mad about that. Yeah, I was probably a coward. No, well, who knows? So I was mad about that.

And then we didn't talk. And then you called me to talk and I wouldn't talk to you. Like 13 year old. Yeah. Like I look back, I'm like, God, why did I handle? But I took it so personally

that I couldn't even talk to you about it. I remember that. I remember that. Look at... But it was a lot of it had to you about it. I remember that. I remember that. Look at. But it was a lot of it had to do with the history that we had. Yeah. I honestly felt like I was like, you know, it was like fighting with my dad or something. Yeah.

It was sort of like you said, you know, after we did the Grantland, the Grantland deal, it was like, this is my guy. And it's sort of like, where's my guy gone? He's disappeared into the corporation. Yeah. and doesn't he think i'm important anymore and uh the answer was of course i thought you were important i didn't have time to deal with it yeah and uh that's a but i think i i don't think i was the only one in that position of you're used to because you were such a good boss when you had an easier job that now you're just kind of quickly passing through people's lives. And it was really, it was just different, you know, it was cause that wasn't

your management style. Your management style was anytime you went into a meeting, you always knew what the fuck was going on. And you always had a way of, Oh, even though I just spent a half hour with John, it was a really meaningful half hour. Yeah. And then at some point, that job was crazy. Well, I remember thinking, we have 1,000 people under contract for talent. Just talent. Yeah. So if I see three people a day, I'll see everybody one day. Right?

Yeah. One time a year. And of course, you have a hierarchy of who you can see. And at that point, I mostly in bristol and la and so it was like we got to see the 30 40 50 people who matter the most and i always hated that i'd run past people in the halls of bristol and i'd go hmm i think that i think that guy's yeah i think his name is bob and i think he's right in the SEC network for me. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that he's doing,

he's like the third play-by-play guy on the SEC football. Yeah. And I had a natural inclination to want to know everybody, right? I go to the cafeteria and I try to remember everybody's name. And it is the people, ultimately you have to be somewhat impersonal at a very senior level with tens of thousands of people. There's no way to know everybody.

So we had a dinner, I think like a month after I got suspended in LA, and I made the mistake of telling somebody that worked for you, like my plan for things I want to talk about, who then told you all the things I was going to talk to you about. And it was like playing an NFL game where everybody knew, the other team knew my plays. It's like the Tampa Bay Bucks. I was like,

what's going on? I thought that reverse was going to work. And I don't think that made it great. But then, I don't know. Did you feel like I was going to leave at that point? It's weird. We never talked about this.

I did ultimately come to believe that you weren't going to be happy within the constraints of ESPN, right? Yeah. And it always gave me sort of a bad vibe when I had to be the bad guy and call because I wanted to let you do the Obama interview. Yeah. But then when I got to be the man and had to call to say, you can't do this. I don't like that role particularly. It wasn't

natural to me. Though, I accepted it was my responsibility. I'm always taking my responsibility pretty seriously. But then,

yeah, we could talk about the, you know, the morning when I decided that we weren't going to renew your contract. And all I did was beat you to the punch because you weren't going to stay. And I decided that we weren't going to renew your contract.

And all I did was beat you to the punch because you weren't going to stay. And I knew that. Because I think ultimately you felt that you needed to find out what you could do for yourself. If you were on your own, what would you do? The problem, though, is I really love the Grantland people. And I was still to the bitter end trying to figure out how can this work? I remember we had talked about an idea of I just left the company and then we formed a company that then was outside of the ESPN universe. And that became Grantland.

And how would that look? And I think there was just so much bad blood with people underneath you more than anything that that wasn't realistic. I'm sorry that Grantland was a casualty of that because it was a good group of people. I don't know if it would have been possible to sort of create, to say, hey, take Grantland. I think we had invested enough money that I'm not sure there would have been a receptivity internally to just let him have it. If it had been the John Skipper company in retrospect, I would have said, just take it and go do it yourself because you would have had no trouble covering it.

You'd have found sponsors. Well, because the ride home model was the one that was the most interesting to me because he basically was outside the company but worked for the company. And it was kind of at some point thinking like, if we just did that, that would work. But yeah.

He got that a couple of places. Mara, man who does the Espy's, has her own company and does the Espy's for us. And yeah, you could have probably created content for us and done what you're doing now if I'd have been savvy enough to sort of figure that out. The thing is, the beat to the punch thing though, I was still, the night before,

I still hadn't felt like I had really said anything. But what was happening was people were writing these pieces. Yeah. And you were reading the piece and not actually listening to. I mean, I was on Dan Patrick's show. I made some joke about, I don't know if he has testicle fortitude. But then the way the piece made it sound. Yes.

And you had already told me, you got to steer clear of the NFL. Like, this is, you really have to. So, I don't know. But do you regret that now? Forget which part of it? The beat to the punch thing. I regret that it interfered with our relationship for a long time. Because you should have just called me.

We should have talked about it. We should have, I guess. Because I had had 14 good years at that point, you know? You had 14 great years. You were a master at Twitter. And I think I calculated somewhat cold-heartedly, he's going to beat me to the punch and it's going to be on Twitter. I do recollect that I didn't get a heads up about the Dan Patrick show.

So it was my one chance. No, I didn't give you a heads up. I remember, actually, I didn't have that conversation with you. I had it with Babydoll, James Dixon. But that was another one where I had been on there before, and I didn't know I had to do the heads up. I mean, that was just like stupidity on my part. I mean, I was like you.

I was doing so many things. Things were slipping through the cracks for me, too. It's funny. But you're right. When you grow up and you remember these things have an arc, right? I don't know. Even sitting here, don't you sometimes sit here and go,

how did I get here? I mean, what was a series of events? To me, it seems stupid now because we had this real relationship and we at some point should have just had of events. Well, but it just, to me, it seems stupid now because we had this like, you know, real relationship and we, at some point should have just had like a real conversation about it. But I think at some point, I say it from your point, because I look like the rogue asshole

who's not, not listening to you. And that's making you look bad as a leader, which is a whole other issue. Look, in retrospect, we both in some ways probably looked a little petulant, foolish. I agree. And we would have been more dignified had we said, let's get in a room and figure out what we're going to do here. Yeah, let's go have a dinner and talk about this shit. Do that. But it was hard because it's a cop-out, but it doesn't mean it's an irrational or incomprehensible cop-out,

which is I didn't have time. Yeah. Right? I didn't have a day to fly out to L.A. and take, which is what it would have taken. Yeah. In the past, you know, you and I had, you mentioned before, we had dinners, we talked.

If we'd have had a dinner, we'd probably figured it out. I didn't have time. It's a cop-out. And you should make, you know, I should have made time for someone who made the contribution you had. And I, I don't think you ever did not feel genuinely that I appreciate it. I remember, but, um, uh, and it was profound. I mean, my, just like you have people now who work for you and they make you more prominent, I knew that what you had done had been one of the things I'd used to get me to where I'd gotten to.

Right. I had that and, you know, E60 and 30 for 30 and the magazine and the website. And there were tons of people, I won't call it that, you know, from Seattle. Yeah. You know, who's still there, you know, the lovely John Zare who had that car accident. But I mean, I made my career on the backs of people at Seattle who did the website, John Papenik and Gary Honig and Darren Perry who died, unfortunately, of AIDS.

And I made my career on those people and Sue Hovey and Neil Fine and and Liz Merrill and Wright Thompson I mean and LZ Granderson and and Jamel Hill I mean you know ultimately your your success is made by other people and you get the benefit of it and then you just don't you know you end up if you're successful, of course, it's funny. I remember telling Connor Shell this. He was a good pal of yours, a good pal of mine. Yeah. Being in charge of content can be great.

On the other hand, all the stuff that you really love to do, getting in an editing booth and finishing making a movie, giving notes on a documentary, you'll do less and less of that and more and more of administrative, trying to settle disputes, deal with leagues, deal with contracts and budgets. It's the inevitable irony of success as you ascend to a level that's a lot less fun, but a lot more powerful, a lot more financially rewarding, and a lot more influential. And you decide it's a bargain. So Agri didn't tell you to do it? Tell me to do what? To get rid of me? No.

No. I mean, it made him mad too, but to a remarkable degree. I mean, it's one of the things I remember quite fondly, the autonomy in the job. There weren't 10 instances where either George or Bob ever said, no, you can't do that. There were 10, but it was not, you can't renew Bill Simmons. If I'd figured out a way and gone in, I would have gotten to do it. So you've talked about the issues you've had personally the last couple years at ESPN.

Did you feel like it affected your performance at any point looking back now that you have some distance? I don't think so, Bill. But, you know, it's impossible to say ultimately. I mean, I'm proud of the job I did. It may be an instance you heard me say earlier, you know, I always felt a great sense of responsibility. Well, some of my actions were irresponsible, so I didn't adhere to my own standards there. So immediately after the incident, I said, never affected anything. I don't know.

If you have an argument with your spouse, it affects stuff. Yeah. But do I feel highly confident that I did a pretty fabulous job for six years? I do. Any number of things may affect it. Not getting enough sleep sometimes affects what you do.

But I got, I was well treated and the company absolutely got their money's worth. If you were still there, what would your job be like? I don't know. You know, it's— You'd be trying to navigate.

I don't know. You know, Steve Jobs. Remember Steve Jobs said people don't know what they want until you give it to them? I wasn't—I didn't know I wanted to do something else. I didn't. I wanted to do that job. Once you change, you find you like other things and maybe I have a little wisdom,

but it never works that way, right? If I got the job right now that I got January 2012, would I do things differently? Of course. Would it be better? I have no idea. Your suggestion, I should hire the chief of staff? Of course.

And I would do it now. Would it be better? I don't know. You know, nobody. Well, the thing now about that job is you're dealing with all of these rivals and adversaries, including the zone, but these people that have money and want rights, and everybody's thinking the same way. Hey, guess what's a good bet? Live sports. Look, ESPN, and I'm proud of this because I was one of the participants in this with a bunch of

other people. We identified very early and went out and bought a bunch of rights. And to this day, I mean, you just know ESPN renewed the American Athletic Conference. Right. Because they continue to understand that he who has the rights, it's like playing risk, right? Yeah. Risk. He who has the armies wins. If you get to roll three dice and everybody else has rolling two dice, you will win.

It's like Monopoly monopoly putting the houses up yeah and at some point everywhere you go around you you run into gee espn has seven more years of the nba and six more years of the u.s open and and by the way i think about 17 more years of the acc and um uh the right the live rights are still more valuable than any other content, right? All content is bifurcated now into the only thing that matters live is sports and news and sports is scheduled and news is not. Yeah.

Right. So you can't really schedule news, but you can schedule the Rose Bowl and you know, when the, the day that Wimbledon starts and it's the most valuable live content on the planet. Live content is still the only place you can aggregate a simultaneous, a concurrent audience. And that's valuable to marketers. That's also on social.

Yep. Experiencing everything at the same time. It just doesn't really happen. Game of Thrones is probably the last TV show that's going to have everybody watching it when it's actually on. You don't need to watch anything else in a linear manner, right? You watch everything else on demand. My kids don't even know what channel ESPN's on.

Or any channel. Because they just go to Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube. And people speak into a remote and say ESPN. Now, I've actually done it. And it comes up. It's remarkable. And I do think that we're in up. It's remarkable. And, um, I do think that, you know, I mean we're in some kind of transitional period and clearly, um, there's too many, it's too hard now. Right. I mean,

everybody hates the tape pay TV bundle, uh, and it is going to continue to decline. It's not going to go away. I don't think, But it did kind of work for a long time, right? You paid one person and you got everything you needed. Now you're going to have to pay 23 different people.

And is there going to be a subscription threshold for people? Yeah, there is. I already have nine fucking subscriptions. Nobody wants more than... It's like, I know the Heinz Ketchup did all these surveys

about how many different kinds of ketchup do people actually want. And it's not very many. People don't want, you actually have, I forget who the grocery store guy is who sort of studied how the grocery store works. And if you have 43 varieties of Coca-Cola, it's too many. You can't really get past about six. So people don't want to have to buy service a to get one comedy and service b to get another comedy so where does the zone fit into this uh you're doing boxing look we're doing this mlb whip around show you're doing that's in the united states mma we're you have a bunch of

soccer we have some rugby and some cricket look Look, we made a pragmatic and opportunistic decision that boxing is the one sport that isn't managed overwhelmingly by NBC, ESPN, CBS, because it had disappeared into a pay-per-view world. And I suspect, I'm looking at your poster here of Ali Frazier. Yeah. Which would lead me to believe that probably you and I've never talked much about boxing, but we both grew up when you cared about boxing. I still care. and suppress the audience to be, for most fights, some hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to pay $80 to see Earl Spence and Mikey Garcia box.

Yeah. That actually turns out, I guess, to be about 350,000 people. Well, they happen to be very talented boxers who almost nobody's heard of in this country. And we're going to try to restore it to where they appear in front of big audiences for an affordable subscription price. And it's a ridiculously loyal audience,

is the other thing. It's a very loyal audience. It cares a lot about it. I do think it can be a broader audience. Yeah. Look, we... ESPN helps with that. Like, the fact that they're putting stuff

on basic cable, I think. Look, I believed in that. I did the top-ranked deal with the idea that we were going to bring big fights. The first one we did was Manny Pacquiao and Jeff Horn from Australia that we wanted to get in front of a big audience again, and they've attracted some big audiences. Our business model is different. We think ultimately we'll end up with a large base of subscribers

and that for $ bucks a year they will be thrilled to get six or eight or ten i hope uh fights that are pay-per-view quality fights it's a great value and then we do have to figure out the baseball show is the first step we have to figure out how to get other content be a multi-sports aggregation then we got to figure out the issue that I think everybody wrestles with, which is one size fits all probably is not the end game. You've probably got to have tiered pricing, and you've got to figure out ways. Because now we're at $20. I think it's a great proposition for boxing fans.

But what if we'd gone in to get the American Athletic Conference, which, by the way, has some appeal. We thought about it. ESPN never let it come to market. But now it's $20 varied entry. I don't know. You know, you've got to figure out some way to make that conference available for $6 or $9 a month.

And we're going to figure that out. But we've got a really good proposition, I think. We're the exclusive home of Canelo, Golovkin, Triple G, and Anthony Joshua, and Danny Jacobs, and Demetrius Andrade. And there's some Deontay Wilder rumors. Look, I had a chance to talk to Deontay. I had a chance to meet with his team. We'd love to have that fight. They've got to figure out what you got now, which is appropriate.

Is Deontay and his team have to figure out the right thing for him to do? And you've got a little bit of a clash of business models, right? You've got top-ranking ESPN that's a pay TV model with some pay-per-views. We're the pure play. We're a subscription service. We're a subscription service. We're going to put the fights on the zone. And you got PBC that's part pay-per-view, part pay television. So what's the ceiling, though?

Is it like you look at the next four years, are you going to become a major player with some of these rights that are going to be popping up? I believe that we'll have a robust and a profitable direct-to-consumer subscription business in a pretty quick timeframe in the United States. And remember, we're not a U.S. business. We're a global business. Our biggest businesses right now are in Japan, Germany, Italy. We've launched in Spain. We'll launch in Brazil in the next month. We are a first mover and trying to capture around the globe, go in, be first mover. We've got good technology. We're buying rights. The U.S. is an anomalous market in the world. It's the biggest market in the world. You can't ignore it. We've got to be here.

But we're in Japan. We have the J League. We have Japanese baseball. We have Major League Baseball. We have more baseball than anybody in a country for whom baseball is one of the two most important sports, along with soccer. And we have more soccer in there. So that's a different market. Germany, we've got Champions League.

Italy, we have Serie A. In Brazil, we'll's a different market. Germany, we've got Champions League. Italy, we have Serie A. In Brazil, we'll have a lot of international rights. We'll be able to create, I think, a niche service. We're not a niche service in Japan. We're one of the two major players in Japan now. But we need presence in New York because New York – I'm not New York. In the U.S. Yeah.

Because it's where the financial markets are. It's where big investors are. And so we've got to figure out a proposition. I think cleverly, I just joined 10 months ago. They already figured out the boxing proposition. And I've simply tried to help make it by going and getting a deal. I did do a lot of sports deals. Right.

So I went and helped do the deal to get Canelo as a way. We now have the most important Hispanic fighter. We have the most important Western Europe fighter. And we have the most important Eastern European fighter. So yeah, would I like to have the most important U.S. fighter? I would. I don't mean that as a poaching. I don't mean that to send a signal to anybody.

You just simply ask me, we would love to figure out a way to have Dante Wilder fight Anthony Joshua because it's a fight fans won't, but I'm not trying to intrude on their business. They have good business to do as well. We're going to try to figure out right now. Business models are in the way of that happening. Right. And business models are real things. People are trying to make a living. So this happened with, uh, the zone sponsor of my podcast for a couple of months.

We had, we had dinner like what, September, October. Yeah. And you had said, you know, you'd had over like probably the year or so before that you had had a real

come to Jesus moment with a lot of stuff in your life, personal stuff, some friendships. You felt like you had kind of, uh, gotten away and you were trying to rekindle some relationships you had. So we had a really good dinner. We talked about a bunch of stuff and decided it would be fun to do something together. That was it. It was really that simple, but it was good. It was a meaningful dinner for me because, you know, obviously you were a hugely important guy for me. And even with the stuff here, there's so much DNA of all the stuff I learned from you and ESPN and Grantland.

And kind of really have figured out how to put together as a business here. But it wouldn't have happened without you. So I'm glad we get along again. Yeah. We have a lot of history. Yeah, no, no. I'd forgotten about a lot of it. It's funny.

It's like going, I've actually avoided, I've never been to a reunion of it. It's funny. It's like going, I've actually avoided, I've never been to a reunion of anything. Yeah. Right? Never been to a high school reunion, college reunion, because I've never like, I wanted to go back

and reminisce about what went on. This is a little, this is the closest to reunion I've ever gone to. Yeah. It's been fun. I've enjoyed it. I appreciate it.

I appreciate the time. There's some other stuff we could have talked about, but you're on the record with certain things, certain nights that happen in your life that, you know, you're not going to talk about that. I don't want to. I mean, right. You know, I think I've been reasonably forthcoming.

The press release that went out at the time I wrote, I did an interview with a Hollywood reporter because there clearly was an unsatisfied response. People thought they wanted to hear more. So I said more, and then I did a podcast with Peter Kafka. I don't have anything else to add to that. How long do you see yourself working? Like at a high rate? I don don't know it's a funny thing i'm 63 because you're flying around a lot i'm flying around a lot but um i feel better i feel you know i feel good and uh i take care of myself and uh uh i got

up this morning uh like uh like bob eiger i might have beaten bob up this morning like Bob Iger. I might have beaten Bob up this morning. I doubt it. I doubt it. Yeah. And worked out and had oatmeal for breakfast. And I'm getting on a plane. You accommodated me to doing this early because I'm getting on a plane.

Yeah, yeah. We got to go. To fly south of here to try to see if I can find another place to launch the zone in. Well, good luck. I'm glad we're able to do this. It's nice to have you back. I'm glad. Maybe this is a good lesson to people.

Sometimes some shit can happen, but talk about it and put the past in the past. I would do a couple of things differently. I'm sure you would too. Me too. But look, we are where we are and you can't, you know, however inelegant the path is, you either are happy with where you are or you're not. I'm happy with where you and I are. I'm happy where I am and it's fun. We'll have dinner again and we'll laugh and we'll have some more fun.

All right. John Skipper, thank you. All right. Thank you, Bill. All right. Thanks to DAZN. Don't forget Apple, Android app, either store, sign up, create an account, start watching across nearly any of your devices D-A-Z-N and thanks to SimpliSafe Home Security everything you need to stop fear

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Go to simplisafe.com slash BS. That is SimpliSafe with two I's. SimpliSafe.com slash BS. Back with one more podcast later in the week. Until then. See them on the way. So I don't have.