Industry Scuttlebutt: Bill Simmons Wants Out Of ESPN, And The Offers Are Already Coming In

A couple of weeks ago, star ESPN columnist/talking head/"shadow president"/podcaster Bill Simmons called the commissioner of the NFL a liar and challenged his ESPN bosses to punish him for it.

They did.

Simmons is currently serving a three-week suspension without pay.

He's apparently pretty upset about it, and now people wonder whether he's going to stay at ESPN for the long term.

We've spoken to a few executives at several old and new media companies about the situation.

Here is the scuttlebutt:

• Simmons' contract is up next year.
• He's not cheap. ESPN is currently paying something like $3 million per year.
• In response to a story that said Simmons and ESPN both wanted to renew, Simmons' best friend tweeted: "I've known Bill since we were 18 years old. That is the funniest thing anyone has ever written about him."
• A CEO at a digital media company with lots of sites catered toward men says that when news broke of Simmons' suspension, people from CBS and FOX called him to ask if he would be competing with their bids for him.
• In some quarters, there's skepticism that Simmons is worth so much money. ESPN executives apparently gripe that Simmons' pet project brands on the web - Grantland and FiveThirtyEight - aren't doing very well.
• One digital media CEO said Grantland writers were completely shielded from traffic data and that there was little pressure on them to attract new readers.
• There's gossip that the blogging platform Medium, the company run by former Twitter CEO Ev Williams, approached Simmons about joining it in a role similar to the one carved out for former Wired and Newsweek writer Steven Levy. Medium sources do not deny this rumor. (Neither will they confirm it!)
• The people who run Turner/Bleacher Report assume that Simmons will end up staying at ESPN. "Nowhere else for him to go," says a source close to the thinking over there.
• Vox Media, which runs SB Nation, might be a natural fit for Simmons. Vox CEO Jim Bankoff has a habit of poaching stars and building sites around them (Josh Topolsky/The Verge and Ezra Klein/Vox).
• "All I've heard is that he wants to go it alone," says one digital media executive.
• "I heard he might just want to go independent but get investment, promotion, sales, tech platform from a partner," says another. If that's true, the Medium rumor makes a lot of sense.
• Yahoo media boss Kathy Savitt should be calling Simmons' agent right now. Even if it's through a joint venture, he'd be a better fit for them than Katie Couric.
• Tim Armstrong should also email Simmons - if only because AOL is where the "Sports Guy" got his start and because he still uses an @aol.com email address.