The Simmons Site

They should change the name to landgrant.com, or maybe communitycollege.com.

 

Certainly not the kind of start/preview Byliner.com had. Maybe that's not a fair comparison.

 

I know in today's world you have to make a splash right away and have earth-shattering stories from the beginning, but two preview stories haven't my dampened my enthusiasm for what the site will eventually be. And to be fair to Baker and Lambert, while I'm looking forward to seeing the stories by the contributors I'm not very familiar with, the primary reason I'm looking forward to the site are for the stories from the writers like Klosterman and Weinreb.

I think whatever stories first appear will have some people saying it didn't live up to the hype - "Frank Sinatra has a cold" could appear on it and there'd be 20 posts saying it sucked and how the hell can grantland expect to succeed when its writers don't even talk to the subjects of the stories?

Of course, when you're the most visible and well-known sportswriter in the country and you're starting something new under the umbrella of the Standard Oil of sports media, you should be held to high expectations and shouldn't be surprised at whatever criticism comes in the early stages.

But it's worth noting that new endeavors often take some time to find their legs:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/toc/7370/index.htm

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1128302/index.htm

 

Wow...the look at every single movie to come out for the next year is both exhaustive and boring.

 

Hire editors.

 

I read Simmons was going to hire a few editors. Does anyone know if he's done so yet? If so, who?

 

An evisceration of Simmons and the website (via The Big Lead):

http://www.mrdestructo.com/2011/05/bill-simmons-and-grantland.html

 

That was delish.
Holy shit, what a takedown.

 

Did I miss something when the blog post said that Simmons had "spent a few years proudly reminding people of his refusal to watch shows like House, The Wire or Arrested Development." - didn't he just do a two-part post comparing elements of the first round of the NBA playoffs to quotes from "The Wire"?

 

Only watched it after years of saying he wouldn't:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060901

 

I love this sentence.

Bill Simmons is to Grantland Rice what Tucker Max is to Hunter Thompson.