Former ESPN columnist Bill Simmons jumped into the avalanche that has descended on the Worldwide Leader for firing Zach Lowe on Thursday.

Simmons said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” that the global leader “lost his soul” when he fired his close friend Lowe, whom the Ringer founder employed at his ESPN vertical Grantland from 2011 to 2015.

“I don’t know. I wish I could explain ESPN, but I just can’t,” said Simmons, who worked for ESPN in the early 2000s before leaving in 2015.

“There is a bit of lawlessness – as someone who has previously been suspended for three weeks and suspended on Twitter a couple of times – I look at some of the things I did and it wasn’t a tenth as bad as some of the things that people are doing now.

“Like Ryan Clark openly challenging them about his extension? I mean, do they have bosses? Even if they want to have a sex video on Instagram. “Ah, it’s all right; I’ll look away from that. Will he be on “First Take” on Tuesday? Ok, cool, we’re fine. Unc did it!’”

The decision to let Lowe go was largely due to his seven-figure salary, The Athletic reported.

Simmons said, “I just don’t get it, ‘Who’s in charge?’ What are you trying to do?”

In his citation against his former employer, Simmons’ citation referred to two highly publicized situations in which two former NFL stars, Clark and Sharpe, had become personalities.

Ryan Clark publicly threatened to leave ESPN before re-signing with the company in February 2024.

The whole world heard how Shannon Sharpe had sex on Instagram Live, but she faced no consequences for the mistake and was back on the air days later.

ESPN also recently lost another of its NBA talents when reporter Adrian Wojnarowski shockingly resigned in early September after saying he was burned out.

Today he is the general manager of the men’s basketball team at his alma mater, St. Bonaventure.

“If you’re supposed to be the global leader, how can you not have this stuff?” Simmons said of the recent massive changes ESPN has seen in 2024.

“NBA last year in general, they lose Doc (Rivers), they lose JJ (Reddick), they lose their lead color analyst twice after firing (Jeff) Van Gundy, (Adrian) Woj is just gone, now Zach Lowe gone. It’s just like your brain is spinning.

“Now I think what we’re going to get and I like Stephen A. (Smith) so that’s not an insult to Stephen A. I really think he’s a good guy. It feels like they are heading toward a Knicks playoff game. This is Stephen A’s entrance.’ And according to them, that’s what people want, and I don’t think they’re right.

“It just feels like the Zach Lowe moment is something that we’ll remember when we’re like, ‘Wow, remember when ESPN crept in that direction and then they fired Zach and.’ went in that direction.’”

Lowe, widely considered one of the best NBA writers in the business, will now head into free agency as ESPN struggles to find its way.

ESPN’s decision to leave Lowe appears to signal a change in its business strategy.

“They were upset about ESPN Radio, it seems like they were sniffing about the podcast business, but YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat, whatever, which has increased over the last 12 years, they’re well represented there, and Maybe that’s their thing,” Simmons said. “They obviously see a vision that is different than what we see.”

“I noticed that Zach was trending on Twitter along with Kendrick Perkins and that is one of the interesting topics here. People see this as ESPN preferring this Kendrick Perkins direction to their basketball coverage over the Zach Lowe direction.”

Simmons continued by saying that Perkins’ hot-tempered approach to entertaining a television audience was not his preference.

For viewers who complain about it, he had a simple suggestion: “Don’t watch it.”

“Now they have put themselves in a situation with Stephen A. where they basically have to keep him. He can name his price,” Simmons said of Smith, whose contract reportedly expires next year.