Bill Simmons still doesn’t know where his column will land, he said at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on Wednesday afternoon.

Simmons, who signed on with HBO in July after ESPN opted not to renew his contract, said his new show will launch in the spring. In the meantime, he’s also working on a new show at HBO Sports (which will also be available via the company’s stand-alone streaming service, HBO Now).

It’s a slower pace for Simmons, who spent years keeping Grantland, his Web site, a regular column, podcasts, and near-constant tweeting spinning on the tip of his fingers at the same time. But it’s a welcome one.

“I still have to figure out where I’m going to write and how much I’m going to write,” he said. “The last couple years, I was trying to do too many things. I was able to do them, but when I finally left, it took a couple of months to recover from them. You step away, and you’re just like, Wow, this is great. I’m just going to to go the movies. Not working is really fun.”

It’s probably even more enjoyable after a year of disputes with ESPN, beginning when the network suspended Simmons last September for referring to N.F.L. commissioner Roger Goodell as a “liar.” In May, ESPN, which has a $15 billion broadcasting deal with Goodell’s football league, said it was cutting him lose when his deal expired.

On Wednesday, Simmons renewed his criticism of his former employer, saying that he “absolutely” believes ESPN avoided overtly criticizing the N.F.L. “The way ESPN has covered the N.F.L. for the last year has been really shaky,” Simmons said. When it comes to coverage of Ray Rice and Goodell, he said, “You didn’t really see it on ESPN. You saw it everywhere else. You start to say, ‘Wait a minute, this is their biggest partner. Are they holding back a little?’”

ESPN isn‘t the only network Simmons accused of going easy on the league, since many of them are competing for the live rights to games. “They’re not going to criticize them because they need the rights.”

Simmons also conceded that Grantland was not profitable. “It was probably like right around even,” Simmons said. “This is probably going to sound like sour grapes, but so much of it has to do with the priorities around how you sell stuff, and we were a boutique site . . . Our issue is that, when you’re a small site, you have to do quick deals. We didn’t make any money off podcasts . . . that was definitely part of the reason I started having issues.”

That said, Simmons allowed that he enjoyed a great deal of his work at ESPN—particularly the 30 for 30 sports-documentary series. “I got to do some awesome things at ESPN,” he said. “I don’t have any bitterness for how it played out . . . I don’t think they got enough credit in the past, sometimes, for some of the innovations they had.”

Still, Simmons said that some of the network’s behind-the-scenes talent may have left. “When I did my best stuff there, there were better people than there are now,” he said. Simmons also believes that unbundling will end up costing ESPN, too: “I think they hit their peak already.”

In response, ESPN’s Bob Ley tweeted that Simmons is entitled to his opinions, but took issue with Simmons’s characterization of the situation. He pointed to “months” of reporting from ESPN writer Don Van Natta Jr. and his show, Outside the Lines, as evidence.

Also on Wednesday, Simmons took a light swipe at Boston. The idea of hosting the Olympics there, Simmons said, “was idiotic,” in no small part because the city “is the most provincial place on the planet.”