Bill Simmons is Right About Pat McAfee

A petty beef, but also a battle for the soul of sports media

On Monday, ESPN’s Pat McAfee lashed out at Ringer impresario Bill Simmons in what was, to my mind, an odd illustration of the sports content times. Usually, a media broadside will target a rival’s integrity, originality, or overall worldview. Instead, McAfee bashed Bill on…the basis of how many people tailed their respective Super Bowl parlay bets?

I think Bill Simmons, who has it all figured out, I think he had like 8,000 people riding alongside of him. I think we had 250,000 people or something like that. Keep running your mouth, Bill. Keep running your mouth.

“Keep running your mouth,” is in response to Simmons imitating McAfee on the B.S. Report, where he’s ribbed The Pat McAfee Show for its general nothingness. The immediate, intuitive reaction to this conflict is to note that McAfee provided a platform for Aaron Rodgers to take shots at Simmons’ friend Jimmy Kimmel. The assumption from some online is that Bill’s criticism is downstream from that feud.

I actually don’t think Rodgers has much to do with the conflict. This is about competing visions for, as Simmons put it, “how to do this.” It’s also about sports gambling, and whether the ability to inspire it supersedes any criticism of how an entertainer is failing to resonate.