"He was also fluent in what boorish men call "locker-room talk" (like when he told a reader that his friends "lost the ability to call themselves guys the moment they allowed a female in their football fantasy league"), but his brazenness about sports usually came off as bravery, and for that he became one of ESPN's most valuable stars."
"He could also be their biggest liability, most famously during the Ray Rice scandal. After the Baltimore Ravens' starting running back was arrested in February 2014 for assaulting his then fiancée in a hotel elevator, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell handed Rice a two-game suspension. (The assault took place at a casino, coincidentally, though there's no evidence that Rice or his fiancée had been gambling that night.)"
Bill Simmons cultivated a blunt, conversational sports persona across columns, TV, podcasting, and Grantland, often using locker-room humor. That persona made him highly popular and valuable to ESPN. Simmons's candid style sometimes bordered on offensive, as when he mocked a reader about women in fantasy football. His public profile also created potential liabilities for ESPN, exemplified by fallout around the Ray Rice case, in which initial lenient discipline and later damning surveillance footage exposed tensions among NFL leadership, team executives, and public accountability.
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