Fans of the Grantland era can officially rejoice.
On the latest episode of his self-titled podcast on Sunday night, The Ringer CEO Bill Simmons announced a very exciting new hire. He announced that his former ESPN colleague Zach Lowe is joining him at The Ringer and will have his own podcast at the network as well.
“Once upon a time at Grantland, I used to work with a guy named Zach Lowe,” said Simmons. “I left Grantland, we have not worked together for 10 years, and now we’re gonna be working together again. Zach Lowe is coming to The Ringer, he’s coming to Spotify. He’s going to have his [own] podcast, and we’re going to launch it next week.”
Both Lowe and The Ringer’s official social media pages also confirmed the news on Monday.
Lowe is one of the most respected basketball writers and analysts in the game and first rose to prominence for his work with Sports Illustrated roughly a decade-and-a-half ago. Simmons, then with ESPN, would later go on to hire Lowe to write for Grantland, ESPN’s popular sports and culture blog, in 2012. But Grantland was ultimately shut down by ESPN in 2015, and Simmons himself left the network that year as well.
While Lowe would continue on with ESPN in a different capacity (doing podcast and television work and also writing for the main ESPN site), he was laid off by the network late last year in a very controversial cost-cutting move. Lowe was regarded as ESPN’s top NBA writer, and the decision to lay him off marked a big departure from more traditional analytical basketball content by the network.
ESPN’s loss is now The Ringer’s gain however as Lowe is reuniting with Simmons after taking the last several months off. Simmons and Lowe had some superb chemistry during their first run together as colleagues, and fans can officially look forward to an encore hosted by Simmons’ popular website.
