Grantland, RIP, by Chuck Strom

When ESPN shut down Grantland on October 30, I was surprised at its abruptness, but not that it happened; after Bill Simmons’s acrimonious departure from ESPN, it was realistically only a matter of time. Grantland was Simmons’s creation, and without him, ESPN had no institutional incentive to maintain it. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his recent interview on Simmons’s new podcast, ESPN may have built much of its popularity with out-of-the-box sports commentary (i. e., SportsCenter with Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick), but it behaves like a financial institution at the merest whiff of controversy, especially when it involves the NFL. This may reflect its ownership by The Walt Disney Company, where the corporate spirit of its founder is alive and well.

Not everything about Grantland was to my taste. I rarely sampled its pop culture offerings, and I could have done with fewer discussions of NFL betting lines on Simmons’s podcasts, but there was no better online home for the literary sports writing that is one of my greatest joys in life. Examples of such are far too many to cite in detail, but I will point out a couple of pieces—oral histories of two NBA teams that were almost champions—the likes of which I have seen nowhere else:

http://grantland.com/features/2002-western-conference-oral-history-los-angeles-lakers-sacramento-kings/

http://grantland.com/1990s-orlando-magic-oral-history/

Only on Grantland would such compelling and thoroughly researched stories have likely appeared in the current media landscape. I’d like to think that with Grantland’s demise someone, perhaps Simmons, will find a way to bring more of such literature—yes, I do call it that—to life, but I’m somewhat skeptical of that prospect. The online market, with its devotion to short attention spans and the generation of the greatest possible number of mouse clicks, isn’t a natural environment for this kind of endeavor. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but if not, I will settle for being grateful for the five years of pleasure that Grantland gave to my life. It could easily have never happened at all.

– Chuck Strom