HE'S NOT A JOURNALIST...:

On Wednesday, ESPN suspended Bill Simmons for saying out loud what ESPN's own reporting had already confirmed.

The Grantland editor -- who is probably ESPN's most valuable commentator -- called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a "liar" in an expletive-filled tirade on his popular podcast Monday. Simmons was blasting increasingly implausible NFL claims that Goodell had not seen or been aware of horrifying video of star running back Ray Rice punching his wife in the face before giving the former Baltimore Raven a meager two-game suspension. Indeed, Simmons' broadside against Goodell came mere days after a bombshell report from ESPN's Outside the Lines "found a pattern of misinformation and misdirection employed by the Ravens and the NFL" in their handling of Rice's abuse case. Specifically, ESPN's reporters wrote that Goodell was dishonest with the public in claiming he didn't know that Rice had punched his wife until September, when TMZ released a now-infamous videotape of the incident.

Last week, Goodell told CBS News that, during the disciplinary meeting, Rice provided an "ambiguous" account of what had happened inside the elevator. And in its Sept. 12 letter justifying the indefinite suspension, the league said Rice's account was "starkly different" from what was seen on the inside-elevator video. Four sources, however, told Outside the Lines that Rice gave Goodell a truthful account that he struck his fiancée. [Outside the Lines]

Bolstering ESPN's reporting, other well-connected journalists wrote months ago that the league knew a security camera caught Rice punching out his then-fiancée. And this month, The Associated Press obtained an audio recording of someone in the league office receiving a copy of the tape way back in April.

Nonetheless, Simmons has been suspended for three weeks, barred even from using his own Twitter account. The offending podcast is gone, too, wiped from the archives.

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