or on social media. Less so when you’re sitting directly across from the intended target.

But to both Torre and Simmons’ credit, they each drew on their past lives at ESPN to embrace debate (their words, not mine) with a lengthy conversation that wasn’t necessarily contentious, but was combative at times. Sure, the episode inevitability ended with two playing nice over their shared love of Tony Kornheiser and featured its fair share of good will. But this was hardly two people just blaming “the aggregators” for a “misunderstanding” like I originally feared it might be.

The episode also resulted in a decisive winner of one of sports media’s shorter and stranger feuds of 2025.

If there was a seminal moment of the podcast, it came 17 minutes into the interview as Simmons combatted Torre’s defense for reporting on Bill Belichick’s relationship with Jordon Hudson as if it were an important story. As The Ringer founder questioned the Meadowlark Media host’s motives by stating, “from afar, somebody could look at it and go, ‘you’re just doing this ’cause you want clicks'” Torre proceeded to not just further explain his reporting but the realities of sports media in 2025.

“But Bill, I think everybody who’s ever made something online has heard that,” he replied. “Unfortunately the death of the classifieds in newspapers, the death of the cable bundle in television has led us as independent media people to have to subsist by basically putting onto an altar your content and hoping that the Sun God that is the algorithm shines upon us.

“… So to me it’s like, yes, we have to play the game. And look, it’s not Hollywood where it’s ‘one for me, one for you.’ That’s not what I’m doing here. I believe in every episode to a degree that is almost disturbingly sincere. But to me, the whole game here is if I’m gonna do a Peabody Award-nominated episode … like, that’s not gonna be as popular as the Belichick stuff or the LeBron stuff.”

It was at that point Simmons compared the varying levels of Torre’s subjects to the difference between The Rewatchables covering “Star Wars” and “Out for Justice.” Because of course.

But while Simmons remained adamant that he wasn’t a fan of Torre’s reporting on Belichick (as well as the subsequent “media tour”), it also became clear throughout the episode that his biggest beef wasn’t as a media critic, but rather as a New England Patriots fan. That’s his right; he is “The Sports Guy” after all. But complaining that the reporting regarding Belichick “felt a little mean” didn’t quite match the amount of attention and care that Torre has clearly put into his work.

Something else quickly became evident: Simmons hadn’t actually listened to either of the episodes of Pablo Torre Finds Out that he was criticizing as he claimed the show’s host was “pretending to be a journalist” (a line he now insists he didn’t mean in a literal sense), nor did he seemingly understand the very premise of the podcast franchise in question. And that only made for more of a mismatch as Torre defended his willingness to “take stupid things seriously,” an approach to sports media that Simmons helped pioneer.

“The actual thing happening is stupid,” Torre said of Belichick and Hudson’s relationship. “But if you consider the people important, you’re like, ‘an interesting development in our understanding of this very significant American.’ And that’s my perspective on how sports is both smart and stupid. And you know this. I’m in a building that is premised on your empire doing something very similar to that.”

“It’s true,” Simmons conceded.

Ultimately, the entire interview is a worthwhile listen and Bill Simmons deserves credit for having Pablo Torre and letting him defend his work. Say what you will about Simmons — and we’ve said plenty — but he’s a living legend in this industry and it would have been easier for him to push forward and ignore the beef he started rather than inviting Torre on his show to have a legitimate debate.

But whether this entire ordeal qualifies as a “squabble,” a “feud” or somewhere in between, the winner was clear. In the end, Bill Simmons came off as somebody who was letting his loyalty to the Patriots prevent him from understanding why a podcast host would want to promote his work in 2025, while Pablo Torre solidified his status as sports’ preeminent investigative reporter on stories both smart and especially stupid.

Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.