A decade ago, Howard Stern got tired of fighting with the Federal Communications Commission over its decency standards and quit Viacom for satellite radio.

More recently, Glenn Beck clashed with his bosses at Fox News and started his own Internet channel, Glenn Beck TV.

Will ESPN’s Bill Simmons, one of America’s most popular sports personalities, be the next outspoken media star to strike out on his own?

Simmons, who insiders say earns more than $5 million a year, comes back to the sports network Wednesday after serving a three-week suspension for calling NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a “liar’’ during a podcast, and then effectively daring ESPN to punish him.


During his absence, Simmons became a free-speech martyr, complete with his own social-media hashtag: #FreeSimmons. Among the many to speak out on Twitter in his defense were Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham. “We love and need Bill,’’ Dunham wrote. “The definition of a REAL (gentle)man in a world of liars and fools.’’

His return marks only the beginning of the intrigue as he and ESPN jockey in advance of the expiration of his contract next fall. The implications may be far-reaching, as Simmons could become something of a litmus test for the rising power of individual brands in a rapidly shifting media landscape.

The drama will unfold at a time when sports have never been a more influential cultural and economic force, and venture-capital seed money is freely flowing into new-media startups.

“He’s a huge brand and sports are a passion point,’’ said Gary Vaynerchuk, an Internet entrepreneur who invests in media companies. “Right this minute there is so much money being thrown around he could probably raise a disproportionate valuation for Bill Simmons Inc.’’

Simmons, 45, pioneered the informal, fan-centric style that dominates so much sports coverage on the Internet. At ESPN, which hired Simmons in 2002, he’s been able to transform himself into much more than a sportswriter.


His weekly podcast, “The B.S. Report,’’ invariably sits at the top of the most downloaded list on iTunes. He helped create the “30 for 30’’ documentary series and the Grantland website, and is developing a Grantland NBA show that will debut later this month.

Simmons declined to comment. Since his suspension, he has surfaced only in snapshots on his Instagram account — Simmons at the beach, Simmons on the golf course — seemingly designed to let ESPN know that he’s enjoying his time off.

But people close to Simmons say he is furious and has been talking a lot about whether ESPN is still the right place for him. He has threatened to leave ESPN before, but this is the most heated moment yet in their fraught relationship.

Those close to Simmons said he feels that the company has changed significantly since he renewed his current contract in 2009. In the intervening years, John Walsh, the ESPN executive who gave Simmons his first assignment after reading a column in which he mocked the network’s award show, the ESPYs, has played a diminishing role in the company. John Skipper, another early Simmons champion, was elevated to president of ESPN.

While Skipper remains a strong supporter of Simmons, he has less day-to-day involvement with the company’s editorial operations. It was not Skipper, but an executive vice president at ESPN who reports to him, Marie Donoghue, who called Simmons to inform him of his suspension.

Last week, Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of the Walt Disney Co., which owns ESPN, was asked about the controversy at a conference hosted by Vanity Fair magazine. Iger would only say that Simmons was taken off the air because his comments about Goodell, made in the thick of the Ray Rice domestic violence scandal, did not conform to ESPN’s journalism standards.


If Simmons were to leave ESPN, he could move to another media conglomerate, such as Fox, or to a digital media giant like Yahoo or AOL. (He actually first made his name blogging for AOL for $50 a week.)

It seems more likely that Simmons would want to create a multiplatform business of his own. Hypothetically, anyway, it could include a production studio that makes sports films and documentaries for a distributor like HBO or Netflix; a podcast network; a website; and maybe a YouTube channel.

Simmons will have to weigh the profile, access and guaranteed salary he gets from ESPN against the uncertain promise of building something of his own.

“Ninety-nine out of 100 sportswriters have no entrepreneurial leanings,’’ said Michael Wilbon, a co-host of “Pardon the Interruption’’ on ESPN. “Could Bill be the exception? I guess. I’m not ruling out the possibility.’’

Simmons has already built one product around his sensibility, Grantland, an admired sports and pop-culture site. Its traffic numbers are modest — it attracts close to 5 million visitors a month, and benefits from a portal on ESPN’s home page — but the site is still young and driving clicks has never been part of Grantland’s more literary mission.

In some ways, the best model for Simmons might be Beck, who established his business on the back of a free website, the Blaze, and a subscription-only Internet network. Fox paid Beck about $2.5 million a year. In its first year, Glenn Beck TV generated about $40 million in revenue.

But Beck already had several different revenue-generating platforms in place when he left Fox, most notably a radio show syndicated on more than 400 stations that he could use to drive his listeners to his new Web TV venture.

Simmons has a faithful fan base, too — including almost 3 million Twitter followers — though it is difficult to know how much of it comes courtesy of ESPN, which attracts more than 80 million visitors a month to its website alone.

ESPN has proved to be a difficult perch to give up, even for those with a history of conflict with the company. Consider Keith Olbermann, who rejoined ESPN last year for the third time in his broadcasting career.

“The way I look at things is, what is the community around Bill Simmons and how big is that community?’’ said Betsy Morgan, a president and the chief strategy officer of Beck’s TV network and website. “If Bill didn’t live on ESPN, would that community still have a way to find him?’’

Individual brands have proven to be portable in the age of digital media, which has made it easier than ever for personalities to connect with their fans. The more established news and entertainment companies no longer have the same hold over the biggest stars. A number of high-profile journalists, including Katie Couric, Glenn Greenwald and Ezra Klein, have recently left traditional news organizations for digital-media ventures.

Kenneth Lerer, the co-founder of the Huffington Post and chairman of BuzzFeed, said he has never met Simmons, but thought it would be relatively easy for him to move to another large company, but infinitely more difficult to start something of his own.

“Knowing what I know now,’’ Lerer said, “I think he should say: ‘I had a breakdown, I didn’t mean what I said. I’m back at ESPN and I love it.’’’

Simmons’ suspension was just the latest rift between him and the network. In August, Simmons abruptly departed ESPN’s basketball pregame show, “NBA Countdown,’’ after a brief, unhappy tenure.

Last year, he was banned from Twitter for three days after describing a segment on the ESPN2 program “First Take’’ as “awful and embarrassing for everyone involved.’’

The latest censure was far more draconian. ESPN, which has close business ties to the NFL, docked him two weeks’ pay and prohibited him from communicating with any of his colleagues.

The company seemed to be sending a message. For all of his popular appeal, Simmons is peripheral to ESPN’s bottom line, which depends not on the power of its personalities but on its deals to broadcast live sporting events. There are executives at the company’s headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, who resent the freedom — and resources — that Simmons has been given to run his own fief in Los Angeles.

There is still another year on Simmons’ contract, plenty of time for cooler heads to prevail.

On the other hand, like Stern and Beck before him, Simmons may crave more freedom. And even apart from the ongoing tension with ESPN, Simmons has long seen himself as someone who likes taking chances.

“I am not afraid to fail,’’ he told the Huffington Post a few years ago. “And beyond that, I am not afraid to fail violently and miserably. So anything is possible.’’