Grantland so far

When SI came in your mailbox 20 years ago, did you complain that certain things were there and were not there?

 

Grantland isn't SI.

I've stopped looking at the site. SO disappointed....what a wasted opportunity. I still hope someone can take control of it and create something worthwhile.

 

I have tried to read Marry/F@#$/Kill: A Tribe Called Quest three times and I am still not sure what I am reading about. Is it an album review? Is it a movie review?
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6786941/tribe-called-quest

Found this passage interesting:

Marry: "Electric Relaxation"
You might say that a song about bumping uglies, whose best-known lyric is "Bust off on your couch now you got Seaman's furniture," is not marriage material. Well I'd gladly turn this whore into a housewife. When I first heard "Electric Relaxation" on the radio and Phife came on the track with "I like 'em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican, and Haitian," I realized I needed to save $10.81 ($9.99 plus tax) and hit Vinyl Mania on Carmine Street to make amends for "L'Affaire K7." Sure, I was 11 years old and might not have even understood where Haitians came from, but Phife jumps in with so much gusto that I could sense Tribe's greatness even though I didn't really know what they were talking about. 'Til death do us part — I can't think of many other songs in the Quest catalog I could say that about.

 

I've decided that my favorite thing about Grantland is the little turtle on the bottom of the main page that links you to the archives.

 

That story was an absolute disaster, although I did enjoy Kang's discussion of the idea of Will.I.Am being a better rapper than Lil' Wayne.

 

The site has become silly. And while I'm all for doses of silly, I was hoping for something with a little more weight. ESPN's Esquire maybe. At this point, I have to wonder if some people are regretting their association.

 

I sort of think this has taken on momentum of its own that's leading to overstatement.

Read what you like ... don't read what doesn't appeal.

 

I think it's a tail of 2 expectations - the high expectations of everyone here at SJ and the expectations of the general public.

It's entirely possible that SJ crew misunderstood what Grantland was going to be. The general public had no real preconceived idea.

 

I think that's very astute.

 

C'mon, did we really expect Bill Simmons to be the savior of long-form journalism? The site is pretty much what I expected.

 

This site isn't that much about Simmons that anyone should have come in with that expectation. If that expectation was there, it should only have come due to the cast of characters with whom he surrounded himself.

By the way, the Beavis & Butthead preview trailer made it worth a week of checking in, all by itself. 8)

 

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6769919/sabermetrics-sunday-times-called-women-sports-section

If you want to write something like this on your tiddly Wordpress blog, fine. I know Grantland is sports and pop culture, but this has no place on the site.