Bill Simmons built his career — and a sports media empire — by mixing pop culture references into his sports analysis.
But when it comes to the Philadelphia Eagles’ dominance this season, “The Sports Guy” has truly outdone himself.
On Monday’s episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Ringer founder dissected the Eagles’ 37-34 overtime victory over the Buffalo Bills, which advanced Philadelphia’s record on the season to 10-1. In doing so, Simmons compared the Eagles to a penis — that’s right, a penis — in an effort to describe how Philadelphia hasn’t even shown all it’s capable of yet.
“They’re just the all-time Milton Berle team, at least for regular season that I’ve seen. They might have a 14-inch c***. It might be 15 inches, I don’t know. But we’ve only seen five inches of it,” Simmons said of the Eagles while discussing the game with “Cousin” Sal Iacono on a podcast titled in part “The Milton Berle Eagles,” before adding, “Sorry to be crude, listeners.”
Well at least he apologized.
Still, the former Any Given Wednesday host continued: “They’ve only had to pull out five or six inches of it during the season, but I think it’s Milton Berle sized, and yet we may never see it. It’s always just enough.”
For the uninitiated, Milton Berle was prominent television host in the 1950s who was famously rumored to have been well endowed. Simmons first published “The Milton Berle Theory” in a mailbag for ESPN.com’s Page 2 in 2006.
Wrote Simmons:
I thought of a new gambling theory after last week’s Denver-Oakland game when the Broncos sat on a 13-3 lead for the entire second half: The Milton Berle Theory. In case you didn’t know, Berle was famous in Hollywood circles for being more endowed than anyone else. Basically, he was the Dirk Diggler of Hollywood. (Note: There’s a hysterical anecdote in the SNL book “Live From New York” about this. Highest of high comedy.) Anyway, the famous story about Berle (maybe an urban legend, maybe not) was that somebody challenged him to a “who’s bigger?” contest once, and Berle soundly defeated the guy, then bragged to someone else in the room, “I only pulled out enough to win.” I’ve heard this story 20 different ways but that’s always how it ends.
What does this have to do with gambling? In the age of perpetual putridity, I feel like we’re seeing these games now where double-digit favorites play bad teams straight up, let them hang around for four quarters, then prevail in an unsatisfying, closer-than-we-thought win that leaves their fans wondering what the hell just happened. Well, why does this happen? Because they only pulled out enough to win. And the thing is, only a couple of coaches have enough confidence to do this: Belichick, Dungy, Shanahan, and that’s about it. But they do it because they don’t want to waste surprise formations, no-huddle offenses, gimmick plays or anything else that they need to save for a good team. Look at the Broncos: They were home against the decrepit Raiders, then they’re going to Cleveland this week to play a subpar Browns team … and that’s followed by two mammoth conference games against Indy and Pittsburgh. Why show anything against Oakland and Cleveland in the meantime? Why not pull out just enough to win?
I don’t know anybody whose first reaction when analyzing an NFL game is to compare a team to the apparently impressive penis size of a celebrity who died 21 years ago. But there’s a reason why Simmons is considered a sports media pioneer.