Wow. I just poked around to see reaction to Bill Simmons being suspended by ESPN for three weeks for calling Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, a liar on his (Simmons’s) podcast  … and it seems like every blogger and talking head has weighed in.

It’s the perfect storm for sounding off.

Seems like most everyone hates Simmons or ESPN, and sometimes both of them. Which leads to blog entries and video clips.

And me?

Maybe the “career as a manager” has colored my thinking, but I find myself sympathizing with ESPN’s suits.

Simmons is a loose cannon, in their minds, who no doubt engenders agitation among sponsors, from time to time, and company execs who wish his language wasn’t as salty and he didn’t vilify people quite so easily nor as often.

Simmons seems to consider himself a rainmaker for ESPN, and I suppose he is. I wrote in 2010  that he is unchallenged among modern sports writers, which may be unprecedented. Red Smith had Dick Young, and all that. Everyone has a rival. Except Simmons.

He is prone to self-righteousness, of course, often after he has been called on the carpet for political incorrectness. He gets awfully high and mighty after he’s been banned.

And I can see how ESPN wishes he would think before he speaks.

But, backing ESPN is like rooting for General Motors. They are big and arrogant and represent their website as a source for general sports news when their home page always is most concerned about sports or leagues for which ESPN holds the broadcasts rights.

(The Olympics, NBC properties, are almost invisible on ESPN.)

The most sensible thing I have read on this was by ESPN’s ombudsman, Robert Lipsyte who, not surprisingly, seems to come down on the management side of things (that is, the people who pay him), but he also makes the salient points that Simmons apparently works unchecked and unsupervised, more often that not.

He also suggests that standards can’t change just because a guy is on a podcast, rather than his regular written entries — which seem to have been vetted.

For such a big organization, Lipsyte notes that ESPN doesn’t seem to have standards and practices — like what can you say on a podcast, and can you post it without someone checking it?

ESPN needs to figure that out.

I’m guessing that this will lead to the end of the Simmons relationship with ESPN, whether it is now or when his contract runs out.

Then he will go off and start something new, and maybe it will be as popular, but it won’t be as deep-pocketed.

End of day, I don’t find myself feeling badly about BS. He trashes people too often to feel sorry about. And he knows when he is about to get in trouble, as he basically challenged the “old guard” (as Deadspin seems to refer to anyone over, say, 35) to discipline him for calling Goodell a liar over and again.

It is his managers and ESPN executives who have to answer to Simmons’ rants and the heat they generate.

And Simmons does not have a right to call the NFL commissioner a liar on his employer’s website until we get more evidence of that.

Simmons and ESPN will be just fine. Perhaps not with each other, after this, but they will continue to make money, and get attention, and that should please everyone.