One of the most interesting characters to emerge from the ESPN book is the formerly inscrutable Bill Simmons, if only because we've never heard him be so (openly) self-aware before. He again whips out the big swinging dick in some more excerpts.

I haven't been able to peruse the new ESPN book yet, as Daulerio and the others have, but I was struck dumb by a quote from the book that was excerpted by Richard Deitsch over at SI.com. This is what Berman said in regard to the NFL forcing the network to cancel its Playmakers series:

Not two days since the embargo was lifted, the giant dragon fart of a book known as Those Guys Have All the Fun has left both publisher and subject alike strategizing about a new defense. Yes, ESPN officially threw together a semi-emergency town hall meeting ("tent"!!!!) earlier this afternoon for select talent and execs …

There's a brief section about The Decision in Those Guys Have All the Fun, and if the details aren't exactly fresh, the takeaway is somewhat new: Everyone involved was using everyone else for their own ends to produce what amounted to a massive orgy that they all came to regret the next day. And LeBron was just the…

Dick Ebersol is leaving NBC Sports, as you may know. Let's not think about the bad times, though. Let's think about the fun we had. Like yesterday, when we came across this quote in the excellent ESPN book that we're currently dry-humping up and down the site:

While the long-standing Kornheiser-Berman beef doesn't have the same initial draw of, say, Beadle-Andrews, its appearance in Those Guys Have All The Fun does lead us to the alleged root of everyone's favorite alleged pick-up line: You're with me, Leather.

Here's a fun passage from Those Guys Have All the Fun, addressing Bill Simmons's two-week suspension over his tweeting in 2009.

Michelle Beadle freely admits that she's not a fan of Erin Andrews. "Everyone who knows me knows that," she tells me. It hasn't affected any of the hierarchy at ESPN at this point, but Beadle's admission in the new ESPN oral history that she watched Erin's peephole vid could put the WWL in the precarious position of…