ESPN has suspended analyst Bill Simmons for three weeks over a profanity-laced rant in which he called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a “liar” and challenged his bosses at ESPN to punish him for criticizing the league’s recent handling of its domestic violence issues.

The network made the announcement on Wednesday.

“Every employee must be accountable to ESPN and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN’s journalistic standards,” the company said in a statement. “We have worked hard to ensure that our recent NFL coverage has met that criteria. Bill Simmons did not meet those obligations in a recent podcast, and as a result we have suspended him for three weeks.”

Simmons, who was suspended by ESPN last year for criticizing one of the network’s football segments on Twitter, made the Goodell remarks on his Monday podcast.

“I’m just saying it. He is lying,” he said on the B.S. Report. “I think that dude is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test that guy would fail. For all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such f–king bullsh-t. It really is. It’s such f–king bullsh-t. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted. I really was.”

Goodell has claimed that nobody from the NFL saw the video of Ray Rice assault his fiancé in a casino elevator last February until TMZ posted it on Sept. 8.

“I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell,” Simmons said. “Because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone. The Commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast. . . . Please, call me and say I’m in trouble. I dare you.”

ESPN suspension of Simmons was quickly denounced on Twitter, where #FreeBillSimmons was the top trend in the U.S. late Wednesday.