Grantland so far

Not every comments section is raw sewage.

You're not going to find a lot of crap choking the sections at The Smirking Chimp or The Guardian. A lot of smart commenters.

The peanut gallery at ProFootballTalk is funnier than any of the writers. They are the only reason to read that site.

 

Making people have to sign in with their Facebook log-in to be able to leave comments (instead of letting them be anonymous) severally cuts down on the lowest common denominator-type posts. It's a lot harder to hide behind a fake screen name than your Facebook profile.

(Note: I could have made this post in roughly 40 percent of all posts in our Sports and News section and it would have fit.)

 

Simmons is a special case. There is a message board called "Sons of the Sports Guy" ( http://sotsg.com/forum/index.php ) with over 50,000 posts dedicated to trashing everything he does. If comments were allowed on Grantland, they would immediately become inundated with posters spewing vitriol.

 

Simmons could always open up the comments sections and hose down Morontown whenever it needs it.

 

To be fair, if comments were allowed, they'd be filled with too much navel-gazing, way too much use of the word "I" and a lack of focus from the commentariat.

The Sons of Sports Guy site is interesting in that I think it originally started as something that supported Simmons but a few years ago the tone turned and since then it's pretty much been a rip fest.

 

Exactly. Makes a huge difference in garbage posts.

 

This doesn't happen at Ebert's blog. You would expect a ton of fawning and empty-calorie posts. Those can be as exasperating as the troll posts. There is a regular commerce of ideas and occasionally some unmoderated rough-and-tumble.

 

Amy Winehouse's death got the Grantland treatment? Sheesh.

 

I really want to read some good stuff on the NFL, but the few pieces Bill Barnwell has written could have been produced by any intelligent football fan with a TV.

 

Based on its track record...it should have. That's a nod to consistency. Good read, too. The narrative lede took too long.