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Credit: Bill Simmons on YouTube
When a viewer presses play on an episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, newly available on Netflix since January, they are quickly hit with iconic catch phrases popularized by The Sports Guy over the course of his career:
“Tyson Zone”
“Body Language Doctor”
“Ewing Theory”
From Simmons’ early days at ESPN’s Page 2 and into the launch of his podcast, he developed a new dialect for talking about sports. Through the sheer force of exuberance and a slice-of-life style (and sure, the fantastic fortune of Boston sports becoming monoculture at the precise time he made it big) — made more approachable by the internet — Simmons informalized sportswriting and connected more intimately with readers than almost anyone before him. Many of them were also in the industry. The slogans highlighted in the podcast’s intro seeped into other writers’ work right away.
When Simmons later launched Grantland at ESPN, the best websites often aimed to set the conversation around sports and pop culture. A great package, theme week, or list would engage readers, but, more importantly, it would also flow downstream into the rest of culture, inspiring late-night jokes, radio debates, and lunchroom chatter. By design, early bloggers and online writers were often speaking to one another more than an audience; if the gen-pop happened upon the work, it was a happy coincidence.
Grantland was arguably the best-ever example of the influence a website could have on commentary across the internet, epitomizing the your-favorite-writer’s-favorite-writer trope and crafting a point of view that treated sports and culture the same, with winners, losers, narratives and legacies that were more accessible to the audience. Cersei Lannister could lose a season of Game of Thrones in the same way LeBron James could lose the NBA Finals. Grantland programmed the rest of online media to think and talk like it did, with echoes that still reverberate in Substacks, podcasts, live-blogs, and thinkpieces across the internet.
In the 10 years since its founding, The Ringer, Simmons’ follow-up to Grantland, has succeeded in the far more difficult task of instilling takes and tastes in its audience within an even livelier content ecosystem. Early viral stories, particularly on the NBA desk, showed the way. With the Brian Colangelo burner story, The Ringer broke a uniquely online scandal that quickly distinguished it as more firmly a creation of the internet. Later, the site’s package forecasting James’ move to the Lakers proved it could move faster than more scrupulous competitors.
Equally important to the company embedding itself among a more online generation of fans were its NBA Desktop show, which was built directly around the viral soap opera that is the NBA, and “Halle-Luka,” a parody of the Leonard Cohen classic that leaped from YouTube to center court at the Mavs’ arena. The Ringer was learning to cut through differently than its predecessor, directly addressing its audience rather than the rest of the media.
Since Spotify purchased The Ringer in 2020, the outlet has doubled down on a formula more responsive to fans’ habits. It is an approach arguably even more in the spirit of those early Simmons columns, when some of his strangest monikers and gags were coined. Simmons’ most enduring gift was his ability to foist his very thought patterns and niche passions onto his audience. Somehow, Simmons brought a serious consideration of the Fast & the Furious franchise and a deep appreciation of Boogie Nights into the official record of internet culture commentary. He invited people into his strange circus tent; they left thinking just like him.
The Ringer’s podcasts do the same. Star host and editorial director Chris Ryan often says that his commentary is all one big, long podcast, a useful way to think of why the network’s content offers such sweet companionship. Audiences are looking for parasocial relationships with their favorite content creators; The Ringer embraces the chance to deliver on that. Rather than dictating cultural tastes you can impress your friends with at a dinner party, The Ringer’s hosts instead aim to simply recreate friendship with you directly. Slip into the many hours of content each show puts out, and you might as well be the third chair as your pals talk movies, or hoops, or comics.
The Ringer Fantasy Football Show and Ringer Tailgate have achieved what all podcasts aim to, with cult followings that listen purely for the chemistry and kinship. These two shows, the most effective in The Ringer’s sports lineup at threading the needle between parasocial and smart, have recently devoted entire segments to Hallmark movies and pirates, to the apparent delight of their fans. This sort of chokehold on the audience is rare; being informative in addition to relatable is why The Ringer has staying power beyond that of most of its competitors.
The memes that The Ringer has generated are, in effect, about the people rather than the takes. It’s not about Simmons’ choice framing or clever names. You have Ryen Russillo “coming away more impressed“; Van Lathan’s disdain for “d*ck-riding“; the Bill Simmons “Re-Apex”; C-R month.
For Simmons to have the self-referential intro play on Netflix after he spearheaded a lucrative deal to air video episodes of The Ringer’s podcasts there is also quite the flex. We’re onto at least the third generation of media since Simmons’ rise, and his influence has yet to wane.
The audience now drives the news from the bottom up. A decade in, The Ringer has rediscovered the spirit of Simmons’ early work, driving the conversation online by inviting its audience into the personality of its stars. Of course, The Ringer also has news-makers like Matt Belloni, Todd McShay, and Zach Lowe. Insider knowledge still sells. But by and large, the rest of the media must cover what personalities at The Ringer infuse into their audience, who then spread it like gospel across sub-Reddits, Discords, aggregator accounts, and the comment section.
Since embracing video, The Ringer has also expanded its podcast lineup, adding segments at the start where hosts weigh in on the news. Personalities also open up far more about their lives beyond their niche than before. Not only do Ringer stars appeal to listeners’ interests to build credibility, but they also go out of their way to make the audience feel like they are hanging out with them.
Much of the rest of the internet works like this. Content creators flood the zone with their thoughts on just about everything, demanding reactions. The Ringer, however, was quicker and more effective in generating this sort of gravitational pull than just about any of its competitors from the old guard of blogs and podcasts. Now it ventures to Netflix, the latest expanse for it to spread its tastes, viewers greeted by a constellation of Simmons-isms.
The post A decade in, The Ringer is re-embracing the intimacy of Bill Simmons’ earliest work appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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