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Message: [QUOTE="Scooch, post: 4811788, member: 628"] I can explain that one. Simmons was the golden child of a set of ESPN executives (including John Skipper and John Walsh). Bill was essentially given carte blanche to do what he wanted -- hire for Grantland, make 30 for 30s, etc. All while not doing anything to generate ad revenue (he famously would not do live reads on his podcast, nor would he engage with ad sales clients). [side note: it cracks me up to hear his litany of live reads for The Ringer podcasts these days, guess making money isn't some affront to his sensibilities now] Needless to say, a lot of people resented all that. Wildhack ran the TV production and programming teams, which was loaded with people who resented Bill's treatment. I'm sure JW represented that POV to Skipper, and that got back to Simmons, who is notoriously thin-skinned (and I have the old emails to prove it). So that's that. [/QUOTE]