Bill Barnwell

Last updated

Bill Barnwell
BornWilliam Jerome Barnwell Jr.
(1984-07-05) July 5, 1984 (age 39)
OccupationJournalist
Nationality American
Alma mater Northeastern University (BA)
SubjectSports
Years active2005 (2005)–present

William Jerome Barnwell Jr. is an American sportswriter and staff writer for ESPN.com. [1] He has written about a wide range of sports including football, basketball, baseball, soccer, golf and mixed martial arts.

Contents

Career

Barnwell began his sportswriting career while a student at Northeastern University as an intern for Football Outsiders, a football statistics and analysis website. [2] [3] [4] He remained at Football Outsiders until 2011 when he was brought on to write at Grantland, a sports and pop-culture website started by Bill Simmons in affiliation with ESPN. [5] [4] At Grantland, Barnwell frequently wrote columns about the National Football League, including coverage and analysis of the NFL draft, free agency, salary cap, coaching strategy, rule changes, and prop bets. [6] [7] [8] While at Grantland he also wrote about the NBA, UFC, Premier League and sabermetrics, and frequently appeared as a guest on The B.S. Report . [9] [10] Barnwell, along with fellow Grantland writer Robert Mays, hosted the Grantland NFL Podcast from August 2013 until October 2015, at which point ESPN announced that it was ending the publication of Grantland. [11] [12] [13] Prior to Grantland's closure, the Grantland NFL Podcast missed several scheduled release dates over a period of two weeks without public explanation, leading to speculation that Barnwell and Mays may have been engaged in a dispute with interim editor Chris Connelly. [14]

Regarding football analysis, Barnwell frequently cites a team's DVOA. [15] While working at Football Outsiders, Barnwell developed a metric called Speed Score, which uses an individual football player's weight and 40-yard dash time at the NFL scouting combine to predict future performance. [16] [17] [18] In fourth down situations, Barnwell has written that football teams are unlikely to be as aggressive as they should be, arguing that average win probability usually goes up when a team elects not to punt. [19]

In 2015, he assumed full-time writing duties at ESPN.com.

Personal life

Barnwell has written about his struggles with depression and body image. He lost 125 pounds in 2015. [20] [21]

He is a fan of the New York Giants, but acknowledges that he also "worships" Tom Brady. [22]

Bibliography (selected)

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Simmons</span> American sports writer (born 1969)

William John Simmons III is an American podcaster, sportswriter, and cultural critic who is the founder and CEO of the sports and pop culture website The Ringer. Simmons first gained attention with his website as "The Boston Sports Guy" and was recruited by ESPN in 2001, where he eventually operated the website Grantland and worked until 2015. At ESPN, he wrote for ESPN.com, hosted his own podcast on ESPN.com titled The B.S. Report and was an analyst for two years on NBA Countdown.

"Tuesday Morning Quarterback" was a column written by Gregg Easterbrook that started in 2000 and published every football season until temporarily stopping publication for the 2016 season. The column moved to The Weekly Standard for the 2017 NFL season, debuting on August 22, 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sports rating system</span>

A sports rating system is a system that analyzes the results of sports competitions to provide ratings for each team or player. Common systems include polls of expert voters, crowdsourcing non-expert voters, betting markets, and computer systems. Ratings, or power ratings, are numerical representations of competitive strength, often directly comparable so that the game outcome between any two teams can be predicted. Rankings, or power rankings, can be directly provided, or can be derived by sorting each team's ratings and assigning an ordinal rank to each team, so that the highest rated team earns the #1 rank. Rating systems provide an alternative to traditional sports standings which are based on win–loss–tie ratios.

Football Outsiders (FO) was a website started in July 2003 which focused on advanced statistical analysis of the National Football League (NFL). The site was run by a staff of regular writers, who produced a series of weekly columns using both the site's in-house statistics and their personal analyses of NFL games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domonique Foxworth</span> American football player (born 1983)

Domonique Foxworth is an American former professional football player who was a cornerback in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Maryland Terrapins. He was selected by the Denver Broncos in the third round of the 2005 NFL Draft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat McAfee</span> American sports analyst and football player (born 1987)

Patrick Justin McAfee is an American sports analyst, professional wrestling color commentator, as well as a former football punter, and kickoff specialist. McAfee is an analyst on ESPN's College GameDay, a television program covering college football. He also hosts The Pat McAfee Show live on YouTube. The show is also licensed across the ESPN platforms. He is also currently signed with WWE as the color commentator for Monday Night Raw, as well as an occasional wrestler.

Matthew J. Berry is an American writer, columnist, fantasy sports analyst, and television personality. Berry started his career by writing for television and film and creating a few pilots and film scripts with his writing partner Eric Abrams. After writing for Rotoworld as a side-job, Berry launched his own fantasy sports websites "TalentedMr.Roto.com" in 2004 and "Rotopass.com". Berry worked for ESPN from 2007 to 2022 as their "Senior Fantasy Sports Analyst".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sal Iacono</span> American comedian

Sal Iacono, also known as Cousin Sal, is an American comedian, writer, podcaster, and game show host. He is known for his roles on The Man Show and the late night television show Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He is Jimmy Kimmel's cousin, hence his nickname Cousin Sal.

<i>30 for 30</i> Series of documentary films airing on ESPN from 2009

30 for 30 is the title for a series of documentary films airing on ESPN, its sister networks, and online highlighting interesting people and events in sports history. This includes four "volumes" of 30 episodes each, a 13-episode series under the ESPN Films Presents title in 2011–2012, and a series of 30 for 30 Shorts shown through the ESPN.com website. The series has also expanded to include Soccer Stories, which aired in advance of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and audio podcasts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drew Butler</span> American football player (born 1989)

Andrew Joseph Butler is a former American football punter. He played college football for the University of Georgia and was recognized as a unanimous All-American punter. The Pittsburgh Steelers signed him as an undrafted free agent following the 2012 NFL Draft.

Mark Titus is an American author, podcast host, and former walk-on basketball player at Ohio State.

Michael Lombardi is an American football executive and media analyst. Until 2016, he was an assistant to the coaching staff of the New England Patriots and is a former analyst for the NFL Network and sportswriter at NFL.com. Lombardi also previously served as an NFL executive with the San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns, Philadelphia Eagles, Denver Broncos, and Oakland Raiders. He hosts his own podcast "The GM Shuffle" formerly with Adnan Virk now with Femi Abebefe, and co-hosts a Saturday morning sports betting program on Sirius XM for Vegas Stats & Information Network along with a daily show on Vegas Stats & Information Network called "The Lombardi Line".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tavon Austin</span> American football player (born 1990)

Tavon Wesley Austin is an American football wide receiver who is a free agent. He played college football for the West Virginia Mountaineers, receiving first-team All-American honors twice. He was selected by the St. Louis Rams in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft.

<i>Grantland</i> Sports and pop culture website owned by ESPN

Grantland was a sports and pop-culture blog owned and operated by ESPN. The blog was started in 2011 by veteran writer and sports journalist Bill Simmons, who remained as editor-in-chief until May 2015. Grantland was named after famed early-20th-century sportswriter Grantland Rice (1880–1954).

Juliet Elinor Litman is an American journalist, editor, and American media personality. As of 2017, she is the Head of Production at The Ringer, Bill Simmons' latest online enterprise. Litman is the former host of the Right Reasons and NBA After Dark podcasts and was also formerly the Special Projects Editor at Grantland.

Zachary Curtis Lowe is an American sportswriter, journalist, and podcaster. After starting his journalistic career covering the criminal justice system in his home state of Connecticut, Lowe transitioned to basketball reporting and is today considered one of the premier columnists covering the NBA.

<i>The Ringer</i> (website) American sports and pop culture website

The Ringer is a sports and pop culture website and podcast network, founded by sportswriter Bill Simmons in 2016 and owned by Spotify since 2020.

Sports analytics are collections of relevant historical statistics that can provide a competitive advantage to a team or individual. Through the collection and analysis of these data, sports analytics inform players, coaches and other staff in order to facilitate decision making both during and prior to sporting events. The term "sports analytics" was popularized in mainstream sports culture following the release of the 2011 film, Moneyball, in which Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane relies heavily on the use of baseball analytics, building upon and extending the established practice of Sabermetrics, to build a competitive team on a minimal budget.

Kevin Robert Wildes is an American sports television producer, personality, sports radio talk show host, and podcaster. Wildes currently serves as a co-host on Fox Sports 1's First Things First (FTF) alongside Nick Wright and Chris Broussard.

Sports podcasts are a subset of podcasts that cover topics related to sports and athletes. Content can include sports news, predictions and analysis of game results, debates and discussions between hosts, and interviews with sports figures.

References

  1. ↑ Bill Barnwell - MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Archived March 13, 2016, at the Wayback Machine MIT Sloan School of Management. March 22, 2016
  2. ↑ Leitch, Will Are the Jets a Disappointment This Season? Bill Barnwell From Football Outsiders Breaks Down the Numbers New York Magazine. March 22, 2016
  3. ↑ Barnwell, Bill Bareatime! Grantland. March 22, 2016
  4. 1 2 SITE NEWS: Bill Barnwell Says Goodbye Football Outsiders. March 22, 2016
  5. ↑ Biasotti, Tony Bill Simmons is leaving Grantland. Can the site survive without him? Columbia Journalism Review. March 22, 2016
  6. ↑ Tannenbaum, Rob Bill Simmons' Big Score Rolling Stone. March 22, 2016
  7. ↑ McGeady, Andy A good run, Grantland? It was wonderful while it lasted Irish Times. March 22, 2016
  8. ↑ Davis, Scott One of the NFL's hottest teams at the beginning of the season has completely fallen apart Business Insider. March 22, 2016
  9. ↑ Soper, Taylor Secrets of sports analytics: Top athletes, coaches, execs explain importance of analyzing data GeekWire. March 22, 2016
  10. ↑ Alvidrez, Julia The B.S. Report Report: Get It On Deadspin. March 22, 2016
  11. ↑ Augustine, Bernie ESPN eliminates Grantland, says site founded by Bill Simmons will no longer publish New York Daily News. March 22, 2016
  12. ↑ "ESPN Statement Regarding Grantland". ESPN MediaZone. Archived from the original on October 30, 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  13. ↑ Shephard, Alex and Mark Krotov A Eulogy for Grantland The New Republic. March 22, 2016
  14. ↑ Dietsch, Richard SI Media Podcast: Featuring guest James Andrew Miller Sports Illustrated. March 22, 2016
  15. ↑ Barnwell, Bill Barnwell grades free-agent deals ABC News. March 22, 2016
  16. ↑ Trapasso, Chris Chiefs-Raiders: The most important stats to know for Week 12's TNF game CBS Sports. March 22, 2016
  17. ↑ Tomlinson, Sean How David Johnson Will Inject Life in Arizona Cardinals' Run Game Bleacher Report. March 22, 2016
  18. ↑ Barnwell, Bill Revisiting, Revising, and Reexamining the 2008 Class of RBs Grantland. March 22, 2016
  19. ↑ Hansen, Barrett 4th Down Strategy: Punt, Go for It, or Try the Hard Count? Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. March 22, 2016
  20. ↑ Frauenfelder, Mark How ESPN writer Bill Barnwell lost 125 pounds last year BoingBoing. March 22, 2016
  21. ↑ Barnwell, Bill The Easiest Way to Lose 125 Pounds Is to Gain 175 Pounds Medium. March 22, 2016
  22. ↑ Barnwell, Bill The Debut of Our NFL Preview Podcast Series with Bill Barnwell and Robert Mays! Grantland. March 22, 2016
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.