LeBatard and Simmons Together Again: Last Week's Podcast Was Altered; LeBatard's PTI Suspension
By Jason McIntyre
The good stuff begins about 2/3 of the way through:
LeBatard: “ESPN does a million things well, but we talked about something at the beginning [of the podcast] for the first 10 mins … [about] ESPN not being very good with being criticized, and how unbecoming I find that … they cut out 10 minutes of the conversation!”
(Laughter from Simmons)
LeBatard: “They cut out 10 minutes of our talk about Joe Buck, and they only left in the part where we talked about 30/30 [ESPN summer fare]. That’s unbelievable that they did that!”
Simmons: [Jokingly stammering] “Ahhhh, errr, yeah. Well … I guess their thinking was that it was an hour long podcast …”
LeBatard: “Why are you doing the tapdance? Why are you doing the stammering tapdance? You’ve got problems with authority, you’re a rebel … you’re an anarchist …”
Simmons: [phone making noise]
LeBatard: “What, are you pretending your phone is creeping out?”
Simmons: “I think they’re tampering with it!”
LeBatard: “He doesn’t like this conversation and I understand why he doesn’t like it … but come on, Bill, it’s your podcast … we weren’t ripping ESPN, we were talking honestly about media criticism… ESPN should be covered like a sports team, it’s that kind of brand.”
Simmons: “I guess the thinking was that I covered a lot of the this on podcasts before … I didn’t totally have a problem with it because i had already had a lot of that conversation previously … it’s a big company, it’s going to do a lot of good things and a lot of bad things.”
[LeBatard’s partner in crime]: “… come on, rip ’em!”
Lebatard: “He won’t do it.”
[Later in the conversation]
Simmons: “Would you have talked about that PTI?”
LeBatard: “I got suspended from PTI for calling the Bobby Knight movie a mountain of elephant crap.”
Simmons: “REALLY?”
Lebatard closed with: “I love the company. I just dont think anyone is perfect. And I think there’s an inherent hypocrisy with ESPN being totally OK criticizing everyone else, but [essentially saying] don’t do it to us from inside the building.”
If LeBatard gets suspended for any of this – unlikely, but you never know – can we put in a request for some fresh PTI (read: anyone) meat besides the usual backup tandem of Bob Ryan and JA Adande?