The "Invincible" Rams, NFL Pressure Guys, and L.A.’s Crazy NBA Month With Tom Pelissero and Sam Koppelman

**Bill Simmons** (0:06)
The Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new re-watchables on Monday. We re-did Speed, me, Sean Fantasy, Chris Ryan.
An epic, epic episode. I think I laughed so hard at one point that we had to go to break, so that happened. Anyway, what a fun movie, one of the great action movies of all time and we broke all of it down, including a ton of nitpicks. Speed, a movie that I love and I've seen a million times. Also, very fun and epic, so we talked about everything.
Coming up on this podcast, Tom Pelissero, who we announced yesterday, he's joined The Ringer, he's going to be Netflix sideline reporter as well. He's going to come on and talk about a bunch of football stuff, including what's it like to be an Info Insider? What's going on with the Rams? Who has the most pressure on them this year? What's going on in Minnesota with JJ. McCarthy-Colomer? We covered all of it. Great to have him aboard and we're going to talk about his new gig with us. Then after that, Sammy Koppelman, who I've known since he was maybe even younger than a teenager, he is going to come on to talk about the Lakers, the Quippers, the Suns, how money has shifted into the NBA and screwed it up in all of these different ways. Yesterday was one of the craziest LA basketball days I think ever. We had the Quippers battling with the NBA through an ESPN article. You had the Buss family announcing that they're going to start suing each other. The current Lakers Dodgers owner might be going to jail. He's going to explain all of it to us. This is quite a podcast. Football and finance, it's all next. We're going to take a break and then Pearl Jam.
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Let's go. Let's go. I'm Tom Pelissero, the Ringer, NFL reporter for NFL games. One of the hosts of The Ringer NFL Show. He's going to be on my podcast every Thursday. There's going to be some writing stuff that we'll talk about when we get there, Tom Pelissero. Great to have you aboard. What a pleasure.

**Tom Pelissero** (3:24)
It is great to be here.
A bit of an unusual past month for me. After 23 years of being in training camps and covering the league, I had a little bit of extra time on my hands, but you were one of the first people to reach out to me once I became available, and I'm just totally thrilled and pumped up to be a part of this thing.

**Bill Simmons** (3:47)
The story was even better than that. We saw you the same day when you found out that you were no longer needed at ESPN, and you were randomly in LA. Me and Mallory met you that day because we had heard so many good things about you.
I really admired how even killed you were with it. Because I remember when I was in a semi-similar situation, everybody in your life is reaching out, are you okay? What's going on? And your head's just doing 360s. But you were like, yeah, it'll be fine. I'll find something.

**Tom Pelissero** (4:18)
I remember you said to me too, you're like, I can't believe how well you're taking this. And I think that that was partly a product of, I find out when I'm standing in the Sky Club about to board a flight to LA, and I'm like, what do I do? And I'm like, oh, I checked a bag. Well, I guess I should just get on the plane and get the bag. And yeah, I lived my own funeral for like four hours. It was probably good to like every call I sent to voicemail, like I'm on a plane, I'm not available. And by the time I landed, dropped myself at the hotel, popped over to your studio there and got the tour. I mean, it was cool that it all came together. There were a lot of things we had to work through on this entire deal. But I mean, The Ringer and Netflix and the synergy between those two, like I could not possibly have asked for a better spot to be here.