William John Simmons III (born September 25, 1969) is an American sports writer who is the founder and CEO of the sports and pop culture website The Ringer. Simmons first gained attention with his website as "The Boston Sports Guy" and was recruited by ESPN in 2001, where he eventually operated the website Grantland and worked until 2015. At ESPN, he wrote for ESPN.com, hosted his own podcast on ESPN.com titled The B.S. Report, and was an analyst for two years on NBA Countdown. Simmons founded The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website and podcast network, in 2016 and serves as its CEO. He hosted Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons on HBO for one season in 2016. At The Ringer, he hosts The Bill Simmons Podcast. Simmons is known for a style of writing characterized by mixing sports knowledge and analysis, pop culture references, his non-sports-related personal life, and for being written from the viewpoint of a passionate sports fan. Early life Simmons was born on September 25, 1969, to William Simmons and Jan Corbo. His father was a school administrator, and his stepmother, Molly Clark, is a doctor. Simmons was an only child and grew up in Marlborough and Brookline, Massachusetts, before moving to Stamford, Connecticut, to live with his mother after his parents divorced when he was 13. He attended the Greenwich Country Day School and then Brunswick School in Greenwich, Connecticut, for high school. In 1988, he completed a postgraduate year at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prep school located in Wallingford, Connecticut. As a child Simmons read David Halberstam's book The Breaks of the Game, which he credited as the single most formative development in his sportswriting career. While attending the College of the Holy Cross Simmons wrote a column for the school paper, The Crusader, called "Ramblings" and later served as the paper's sports editor. He also restarted the school's parody newspaper and started a 12-14-page, underground, handwritten magazine about the people in his freshman hall called "The Velvet Edge." He graduated in 1992 with a B.A. in political science (his primary focus was the Middle East, which he often cites in his columns by way of saying his sportswriting career has nothing to do with his degree) and a GPA of 3.04. Subsequently, while living in Brookline, Massachusetts, he studied at Boston University, where he received his master's degree in print journalism two