Bill Simmons’ Grantland Having Startup Troubles

All, Bill Simmons, ESPN, Media Gossip/Musings Ty Duffy June 19th. 2011, 12:19pm

Bill Simmons’ website Grantland shut down this morning. No one made a moderate funny about Bud Selig in the sidenotes. ESPN is not reconsidering why the brand needs a separate website to house Bill Simmons and a smattering of his friends with homogeneous interests, sensibilities and writing styles. It was merely a server issue.

Server problems. Editing oversights (Game 7 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals). This really is resembling a low-budget startup. Well…except for the promotion and the part about everyone getting paid.

[Update: Site works if you go to it indirectly through ESPN.com]

[Photo via Getty]

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29 Responses to “Bill Simmons’ Grantland Having Startup Troubles”

1
ButtersBC Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:21 PM
Site loaded for me, I was hoping for a FastCGI Error to rekindle fond memories
2
gfunk supreme Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:24 PM
Really Butters? I’m getting a generic website does not exist page (like with the search categories and a stock photo) saying: “grantland.com expired on 06/13/2008 and is pending renewal or deletion.”
Also duffy, I have no idea what this means:
Editing oversights (Game 7 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals).
3
gfunk supreme Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:27 PM
Hm. But when I go here “http://espn.go.com/espn/grantland/” from the ESPN page it works.
4
Col. Larry H. Parker Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:29 PM
Also duffy, I have no idea what this means:
Editing oversights (Game 7 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals).
Simmons wrote about how his first memory was the Bruins losing Game 7 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals to Philly. It’s just that the series ended in 6. It was a small oversight. Who cares?
5
tyduffy Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:34 PM
Yeah…sorry…couldn’t link to the column with the correction because the site was down.
6
Col. Larry H. Parker Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:34 PM
homogeneous interests
i don’t know. It seems that considering it is a sports writing website, the array of topics they have covered seems to have been vast over the first week and a half. Cricket, whiskey, all 4 big sports, distant childhood memories. I don’t know what else you expect him to write about…baseball contraction? BCS vs Playoff debates? Never enough of those articles.
7
KC Resident Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:40 PM
Sounds like somebody is jealous they didn’t get asked to write for Grantland.
8
tyduffy Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:42 PM
i don’t know. It seems that considering it is a sports writing website, the array of topics they have covered seems to have been vast over the first week and a half. Cricket, whiskey, all 4 big sports, distant childhood memories. I don’t know what else you expect him to write about…baseball contraction? BCS vs Playoff debates? Never enough of those articles.
Not subject matter. Style. Everything is loaded with pop-culture references/jokes with varying success. Nearly every article is either.
1. A navel-gazing, first-person memoir.
2. An overwrought think piece.
So basically every Bill Simmons column. It has felt, to me, like more of a hive than a forum for original thought thus far.
9
tyduffy Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:44 PM
There’s obviously going to be a market for that (as Simmons has proved). I’m just not sure why it’s revolutionary or needed to exist.
10
Gaseous Clay Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:53 PM
friends with homogeneous interests, sensibilities
I’ve heard that listed as a complaint about the comments section of this place.
It has felt, to me, like more of a hive than a forum for original thought thus far.
you know what they need? 35 consecutive CFB pieces saying what is wrong with college football, along with a nebulous plan on how to fix it, and a strong emphasis on both the transparency and fairness of that nebulous plan.
I honestly don’t mind Grantland’s existence. I’m picking and choosing what i read already, just like i do everywhere else.
11
Gaseous Clay Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:55 PM
I’m just not sure why it’s revolutionary or needed to exist.
so those first person memoirs could say fuck in them, and so that Bill Barnwell could get seen by a wider array of people.
12
Gaseous Clay Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:56 PM
2. An overwrought think piece.
glass houses, now. C’mon.
13
gfunk supreme Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:58 PM
Who cares?
Good point. I’m not a Simmons hater but I haven’t read anything there and probably never will. I just like stories about server issues.
I watched four episodes of Game of Thrones last night (episodes 5-8, i.e. not last week’s yet). It’s great, I think I might prefer it to the book. I would have liked to watch last week’s ep but my gf was already getting pretty worked up about all the treachery and shit, and I don’t think we should have ended with what (I assume, based on the book and the internet reaction) happens in last week’s ep.
14
Der Kaiser Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 12:59 PM
Simmons just wanted to create his “own” site. I say “own” because for all intent and purpose, at the end of the day, it’s still property of ESPN. But I don’t mind at all. I just pick and choose what I want to read. It’s true for this site, or any other site that I visit.
As far as why it couldn’t be on ESPN, I guess Simmons and his gang of writers didn’t want to share the same Page 2 space with such literary luminaries like Scoop “black power” Jackson or Jemele “White devil” Hill.
15
Der Kaiser Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 1:09 PM
By the way, it cannot be said enough how enjoyable these classic NBA drafts are to watch in retrospect. Kwame Brown was just selected as the first pick.
16
charliewade Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 1:15 PM
Know what the real problem is with grantland?
It sucks. Simmons is a smug, self-absorbed little asshole who can’t seem to not get into juvenile Twitter wars with people.
17
Der Kaiser Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 1:17 PM
Know what the real problem is with grantland?
It sucks. Simmons is a smug, self-absorbed little asshole who can’t seem to not get into juvenile Twitter wars with people.
/Liked the story about his dog though
18
jim Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 1:24 PM
It looks Grantland using TBL’s discount Romanian web hosting.
19
starkweather Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 1:40 PM
Charles Barkley saying the Cavaliers had to take Desagana Diop because he might be another Olajuwon is hilarious. I’m sad I’d missed the NBA Draft marathon until now
20
theTed Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 1:58 PM
Know what the real problem is with grantland?
To me it’s that the site feels voiceless. I’m so used to reading blogs that it’s quite strange to visit a pop culture/sports site with a random list of articles. I assume they are going for a magazine vibe, but I don’t read any magazines online. It would be nice if Simmons or someone else wrote something even as minimal as what TBL does for the Round-Up and provided a first person description of the article as opposed to something like they have now. For example, for the Kimmel piece the sites states: “The late-night host honors his father — and remembers the moment when his dad realized he had raised a (hilarious) monster”. That doesn’t pique my interest.
21
karma Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 2:34 PM
I remember I watched the 2001 draft live. In retrospect, the top 4 was one of the worst drafting class in NBA history. 3 of the 4 picks were high school centers, 2 of whom were Kwame and Eddy Curry. Chandler was not a game changer until a couple of years into the league and Gasol was the only one who made an immediate impact.
22
karma Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 2:36 PM
As for Grantland, I like the site, but the only columnist I’ve read is Simmons (and Kimmel today). The site just looks so….empty. I think dividing up themes and allowing users to read articles based on themes (rather than authors) would help organize the site overall.
23
jekyll Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 3:04 PM
at least it has a mobile site
24
Dental Dam Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 4:40 PM
I’ve read a few articles on Grantland. Articles on things like whiskey, shitty NYC bars, Alec Baldwin’s twitter and the like just don’t interest me, so I won’t read them. No problems so far.
25
dontnomuch Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 5:00 PM
Is grantland really a startup?
It’s not like Simmons put up the money himself.
He still needs ESPN’s clout for the names he can throw out.
26
vajayjay redick Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 9:26 PM
I remember I watched the 2001 draft live. In retrospect, the top 4 was one of the worst drafting class in NBA history. 3 of the 4 picks were high school centers, 2 of whom were Kwame and Eddy Curry. Chandler was not a game changer until a couple of years into the league and Gasol was the only one who made an immediate impact.
Compared to the 2000 draft it’s loaded.
27
partager Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 11:02 PM
Grantland has (mostly) good writers writing about things they’re interested in. To say it’s a collection of Simmons articles is ridiculous and ignorant. A few pieces have been great, some have been meh, some have been worthless, but most sites don’t post anything great, so I’ll keep going back. By the way, who expected Grantland to be “revolutionary” or even “needed?” Most blogs, like this one, survive on aggregating other peoples good work or interesting finds, which is fine and TBL is good at that. Grantland has people trying to create something interesting on a daily basis. I can support that.
28
Quietgoesthedon Says:
June 19th, 2011 at 11:46 PM
1. A navel-gazing, first-person memoir.
2. An overwrought think piece.
It sucks. It was always going to suck, and most everyone who had read and followed Simmons’ career knew that it was going to suck. One cat sitting alone in a living room can look like a free-spirited, intellectually curious, and novel being. Five cats in the same room, doing the same thing in the same way, looks chaotic at best, and poorly orchestrated, paranoid, and disorganized at worst. But really, that’s not it.
The reason it sucks is simple. Simmons and his ilk are the modern manifestation of the worst part of our parents’ generation. They’re the 2011 version of Yuppies. Self-obsessed, seemingly self-aware (but only in packaged, commercial, and predictable ways), and incessantly making themselves the center of the universe.
Klosterman’s bit on tape-delayed sports, where he goes off on this tangent about how modern man has slayed the caves and can’t escape from the information age…give me a freaking break. He needs to spend a week in North Africa, living in a box, and I might take him seriously.
29
charliewade Says:
June 20th, 2011 at 1:12 AM
Quiet, you have hit it dead on.
Slate’s ‘Hang Up and Listen’ podcast pretty much said the same thing, especially about both Simmons and Klosterman being really self-obsessed and totally incapable of writing anything that didn’t revolve around their view of the event and only their first-person view of the event. That podcast is really worth a listen, they all blow Grantland a new one.
I used to like to listen to Simmons… until I realized that he never actually interviews any of the actual actors in the events he talks about (the athletes) and just talks with other blowhards. For a guy who apparently never made his bones at all interviewing actual athletes (especially not as a beat reporter), he has done well basically being a bar-stool sports blowhard.
The smugness is really nauseating. He just oozes ‘I’m smarter and better than *everyone*’. What is really telling are his Twitter wars with people because I think you really see what a child he is. He just can’t seem to be an adult when people differ with him.

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Bill Simmons’ Grantland Having Startup Troubles

29 Responses to “Bill Simmons’ Grantland Having Startup Troubles”

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