It took me a couple of weeks, but I finally realized what Grantland is.
Grantland is Bill Simmons’ wet dream of an RSS feed. It’s all the stuff he wishes would come across his RSS, packaged with a title, Grantland, devoted to an important but overblown and racist sports writer. If Simmons were spinning off a website for Politico instead of ESPN.com, it would have been called JeffersonDavis.
The content is actually pretty cool. Simmons has made good on his promise to champion long-form journalism. If you haven’t read the oral telling of The National, do it now. It’s also all over the board, content-wise: sports, celebrities, sports, movies, sports, Jimmy Kimmel, Jack-O, sports.
The site’s layout is unhelpful. It just kind of scrolls down and ends and makes it hard to find archived work. I wrote 10 days ago that it feels like an old Blogspot template. But the site is only a couple of weeks old. The most important component, the content, is solid. The design will improve.
My early grade for Grantland, two weeks in: B.
Find Dave Schwartz on Twitter @daveschwartz.
