Bill Simmons, a person that ESPN pays handsomely to talk about sports, has been suspended by the network for three weeks after he brazenly talked about sports. In an episode of his B.S. Report podcast that was posted Monday (and has since been pulled by ESPN), Simmons called out NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for his handling of the league’s recent domestic abuse scandals. Specifically, Simmons addressed the still-unsettled question of when Goodell saw footage of ex-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his wife—the footage that supposedly led the league to suspend Rice indefinitely.
The NFL maintains that nobody at league headquarters had seen the security camera video before TMZ published it this month, so Goodell was as shocked as anybody to see it. Simmons, like most people capable of rational thought, finds the NFL’s timeline hard to believe, and he said as much on his podcast. Mediaite transcribed Simmons’ remarks on Goodell before the podcast was vanished:
“Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar,” Simmons said Monday. “I’m just saying it. He is lying. I think that dude is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test that guy would fail. For all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such fucking bullshit. It really is — it’s such fucking bullshit. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted. I really was.”
Later, Simmons dared someone at ESPN to penalize him for speaking out against the NFL. “I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell,” he said. “Because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone. The commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast.”