Failed TV Host Bill Simmons Shouldn't Be Jabbing Pat McAfee Over Sagging Ratings | Bobby Burack

Bill Simmons is still feuding with Pat McAfee, which started over an impression of McAfee that Simmons performed on his podcast. The latest round included Simmons jabbing McAfee over his television ratings on ESPN.

"Have you noticed how with sports ratings, everybody’s sports ratings are up on TV?" Simmons asked rhetorically on his show Monday. 

"We just had the Super Bowl, it came out it was the most-watched Super Bowl ever — 123 million. It’s like, that seems weird, because I thought people under 25 were on TikTok and YouTube and Snapchat and on all the streaming services. You have so many more TV choices … Why would the ratings go up?

"And then you see, ESPN, at the end of the month, they’ll be like ‘Highest ratings ever’ for ‘Get Up’ and all these different shows. Same thing for Fox. All their shows are up. Everybody’s ratings are up except for the NBA and whoever replaced 12 p.m. ‘SportsCenter.’"

"The Pat McAfee Show" replaced the 12 p.m. "SportsCenter" last September. The time slot has experienced double-digit year-over-year declines since.

McAfee's show loses around 50 percent of its lead-in audience, "First Take." His struggles have also seen Colin Cowherd close the gap between FS1 and ESPN going head-to-head with McAfee.

So, Simmons is not wrong: sports ratings are up almost universally, but for the NBA and McAfee's program. However, Simmons is not the one who should be making said point.

Bill Simmons is like Pat McAfee in one key area: they are online stars who struggled to make the transition to linear television.

Bill Simmons has fired the latest shot in the brewing war of words between himself and Pat McAfee.

Simmons hosted the number one-rated sports podcast in 2014. ESPN, his then-employer, tried to leverage that success into a Simmons-focused television show called "The Grantland Basketball Hour."

The show never found an audience on television, ending up as one of the lowest-rated talk shows on ESPN.

Simmons left ESPN the following year and signed with HBO. HBO gave Simmons a weekly sports show titled "Any Given Wednesday." The show averaged just 200,000 viewers at a time when a 200,000 viewership average was well below HBO expectations. 

HBO canceled the show after just one season. 

Simmons has not returned to television since. He doesn't need to. He made over $100 million by selling The Ringer to Spotify in 2020. 

Yet if he never does, his television legacy is what it is: an objective low point of his career.

You'd think Simmons, who is quite sharp, would have avoided the ratings jab as it gives McAfee ammunition to reference his failed stints on television. 

Seems like a miscalculation on the part of Simmons. 

He sounds like a hypocrite.