ESPN and Bill Simmons

Had a great vacation up on Lake Michigan, but now back at the ranch and ready to get back to work.

Was thinking about the most recent book I've finished, ESPN: Those guys have all the fun by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. I was looking forward to this one for a while because of my love of sports, backstage politics and ESPN. I also enjoyed their previous work on Saturday Night Live. Not sure the oral history format is my favorite; however, it works for these books.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. It's basically two books in one. The first half is the business history of ESPN, while the second half focuses more on the on-air personalities of the 1990s. Now, that's a bit simplistic since the first half certainly details many personalities and the second half is full of business. But ESPN is ESPN partly because of the personalities it created (and then regretted doing so) in the 1990s. Nothing beat Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann doing "The Big Show" every night. If you like sports, TV, or inside baseball I recommend it.

The reason I felt like writing about it though was a passing mention of Bill Simmons. I forget who it was, but some ESPN big shot was comparing Simmons to another writer and described how Simmons refused to take editing suggestions. Basically, they'd make editing notes on his copy and Simmons would almost always reject them. I wasn't all that surprised to read this after having read his work over the years, but most specifically his book on Basketball. Now, Simmons is kind of on the forefront of self-publishing. He became famous by creating his "Boston Sports Guy" Web site when he couldn't get published by the paper he worked for. This turned into his (epicly long) Page 2 columns on ESPN.com and now his co-branded site with ESPN, Grantland. Brilliant guy, entertaining writer, but .... needs an editor.

As I read his Basketball book, which is about 800 pages long or so, I find myself thinking often how much better that book would be if it was shorter. Definitely a case of less is more. Anecdotes are repeated, ten examples are given to prove a point when three would work, and so on. I was reminded of this while reading an ombudsman piece on Grantland that ESPN published on their page. The analysis was that Grantland was an exciting venture, but the clear, obvious problem the site would struggle with is no clear lack of direction. Simmons, the site's editor-in-chief, takes pride in long, rambling essays. Will a whole Web site full of them with no clear thread connecting them - besides sports/entertainment/hot chicks - work in the long run?

My guess is yes, it will be a success. But, Simmons is a good person to keep in mind for a newbie writer like me. Write about what you know and what you love. If you believe in what you're writing, others might be interested too. That's what he's done well. Just don't forget that sometimes less truly is more. And in the case of his Basketball book, that's definitely true.