ESPN Suspends Correspondent For Calling Roger Goodell A 'Liar'

An ESPN correspondent has been suspended from the sports news network after he called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a "liar" in his handling of the current Ray Rice domestic dispute scandal.

ESPN sports writer Bill Simmons went on a 3-minute tirade calling Goodell a liar on his ESPN-owned podcast "B.S. Report." Simmons said during the podcast that he thinks Goodell is lying about allegedly not seeing a surveillance video of Ray Rice punching his wife until it was release by TMZ earlier this month.

"Goodell, if he didn't know what was on that tape, he's a liar. I'm just saying it. He 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 [expletive]ing [expletive]. It really is, it's such [expletive]ing [expletive]. For him to go into that press conference and pretend otherwise [...] I was so insulted," Simmons said during the expletive-laced podcast.

ESPN announced this week that Simmons would be suspended from his talk show gig for three weeks, arguing that the sports analyst did not respect the network's journalistic standards when talking about Goodell.

"Every employee must be accountable to ESPN and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN's journalistic standards," the network 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."