Bill Simmons new website launched today. Some decently entertaining stuff on there so far. Will definitely be checking back often

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Team Cutler.

Does this mean he is no longer part of the Mickey Mouse Club?

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I mentioned in the "embarrassed to admit" thread that I also enjoyed Day 1 of this new site. I don't care too much for Simmons' lengthy articles, however I am a huge fan of Klosterman's.

Yup. He officially left ESPN. His first article is pretty much the same except saying fuck

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Team Cutler.

Well, if that's the case, I'll check it out when I have some time. I always liked his work, and I've long felt it would get better once he got out from the ESPN Albatross.

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ESPN is the biggest investor in this site.

Well, then that fucking blows.

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It is linked from the ESPN homepage. I doubt he gets to have as much of a free rein as he would like.

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Sounds like even he doesn't like the site:

DIGITAL
Bill Simmons’ Grantland Launches
By Chris O'Shea on June 8, 2011 1:20 PM
Here at FishbowlNY we’ve been eagerly anticipating the launch of Grantland, the sports/pop culture website from Bill Simmons. A little before noon it launched, and it’s got some good stuff so far. There’s a welcome by Simmons, a baseball piece by Esquire writer Chris Jones, and a fantastic article about a forgotten – yet somehow legendary – basketball game by Chuck Klosterman.

And that’s it. Just three articles. Okay technically there’s four, but we’re not counting the post about a reality TV fantasy draft because the entire concept is stupid, writing an article about it is even worse.

For all the hype behind Grantland’s launch you’d think there would be more content, but as Simmons tells Media Alley, he’s focusing on quality over quantity:

I mean, obviously we want people to read. But the thing is I don’t want one person to check ten times a day; I’d rather have 10 people check once. I think the problem with where the Internet is going is that because everybody’s so trapped with getting page views that they’re gearing stuff toward multiple, multiple, multiple posts per day.

That’s a great approach, but it’s also one that only someone like Simmons can afford to have.


He’s ESPN’s number one man and the company is backing the website, so Simmons doesn’t have to worry about Grantland posting weak numbers. It’s a great postition to be in, but somehow that seems lost on Simmons. He sounded apathetic about Grantland when discussing the project with The New York Times Magazine:

Simmons sounded as if he was having some regrets about Grantland. ‘It hasn’t been as much as fun as I had thought,’ he told me. ‘I’m not sure I would do it again.’ Too much of his time was being spent in the office, dealing with administrative tasks, which was encroaching on his column.

This is before Grantland even launched, so hopefully he’s feeling a little more upbeat about it now. If the three posts on the site today are a preview of what’s to come, Simmons will have no choice but to be excited, because everyone else will be too.

UPDATE: Simmons tweeted that there will be more content added later today.

I dunno... it seems that while it is an investor, ESPN probably doesn't have a whole lot of say in the product itself.

The ESPN Albatross would be an awesome corporate mascot.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

yuck, the masthead takes up the top half of the screen and you have to scroll to see new content. get rid of that huge ass picture and the oversized site name.

Correction: Grantland.com is still owned and operated by ESPN. It's on all of their servers and their stuff. So, really, he still works for ESPN.

I guess we'll see the content the site has and determine is the mouse is censoring. I'm not too worried about it at this point.

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Team Cutler.

I don't think it'll be a great site or anything but I've always liked him and klostermann. I doubt it'll differ from his espn columns too much and I'm pretty sure he overstated the importance of the site in the intro column.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I just want him to go back to writing more columns. I dont usually enjoy the podcasts that much. Sometimes they provide a chuckle or two but most of the time I give up after 15 minutes or so.

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I find his articles on anything other than sports to be completely irrelevant and annoying. For example, his infatuation with reality television is something he shoudl probably keep to himself.

Good article on the site today from Klosterman re: Sporting Events and DVR.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6626431/space-time-dvr-mechanics

Pretty funny stuff. Lots of true points in there that I hadn't thought about

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Team Cutler.

The ad in the middle of the homepage really has to go.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... lock-plus/

ghostery . com as well

Good point, I'll try to find one for Chrome.

I liked this article a lot. I feel like Klosterman is going to end up stealing the show from Simmons as time goes by.

You can avoid the news, but you can't avoid The News. Living in a cave isn't enough. We've beaten the caves. The caves have Wi-Fi.

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I like the idea of the footnotes, but I wish they would line up with the point of the column that the note appears. It's annoying to scroll up to read and then try to find your place again

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Team Cutler.

By all accounts, Goodell is a nice guy who worked hard to get where he is. I don't dislike him at all — I just think he got promoted one spot too high. He's in over his head. You know how I know this? Because a league that makes BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS is not going to have a fucking season that starts on time this year.

I liked that footnote

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

You can't avoid The News!

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We don’t hate LeBron because The Decision was a bad idea, we hate LeBron because he didn’t realize that The Decision was a bad idea.

Hate is a bit strong but that's the best way of putting it I've seen. I like this site so far.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Agreed, a very good quote. And directly on-point.

Surprised nobody has mentioned this: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/663 ... ey-else-is

I love Dave Eggers' writing, but it hurts to read yet another take on this tired subject. It's also a bit out-of-touch at the moment, seeing as how fans are not showing up for the party for the first time in 20+ years.

"The Oral History of The National" was an interesting read on Friday

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