ESPN announced that Bill Simmons will be suspended for three weeks after making controversial remarks against NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in his podcast on Monday.
ESPN said in a statement that all employees of the network should be accountable for all their comments and should work within the journalistic standards of the company, and Simmons failed to do so with his anti-NFL remarks.
"Every employee must be accountable to ESPN and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN's journalistic standards," the network said in a statement. "We have worked hard to ensure that our recent NFL coverage has met that criteria. Bill Simmons did not meet those obligations in a recent podcast, and as a result we have suspended him for three weeks."
During his podcast on Monday, Simmons launched a barrage of profanity-laced statements against Goodell for failing to handle the Ray Rice's case properly.
Goodell said that he has not seen the video of Rice punching his then-fiancée when he suspended the Baltimore Ravens star for two games, but Simmons insisted that the NFL commissioner is lying.
"Goodell, if he didn't know what was on that tape, he's a liar. I'm just saying it. He is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test, that guy would fail," Simmons said, Seattle PI reported. "For all these people to pretend they didn't know is such [expletive] [expletive]. It really is, it's such [expletive] [expletive]. For him to go into that press conference and pretend otherwise-I was so insulted."
Knowing that his statement could get him into trouble, Simmons dared ESPN to penalize him for his tirades against Goodell.
"I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I'm in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell, 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," Simmons said.
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