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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It sucks. Simmons is a smug, self-absorbed little asshole who can’t seem to not get into juvenile Twitter wars with people.

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.

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.

glass houses, now. C’mon.

so those first person memoirs could say fuck in them, and so that Bill Barnwell could get seen by a wider array of people.

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.