I knew I'd love Klosterman and Simmons going in. I'm really glad they got Barnwell to do the NFL. My favorite surprise has been Carles from Hipster Runoff

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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

First footnote in his Planet of the Apes piece.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Barnwell's been solid, though that may be a function of me spending the summer starved for NFL news. Klosterman's been uneven, like he always is. I've never been a big Simmons guy, but even with that said his contributions have been a real disappointment for me. Getting his own website seems to have given free rein to his most self-indulgent impulses.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Barnwell's writing is often stronger than his analysis. I go back and forth on him. I agree about the Lambert pieces being awful thus far. The mailbag-type pieces feel very out of place for a website that designed to be for Important Sports Writing; Simmons should probably send those over to ESPN.

All that being said, if I'm forced to choose between Grantland and Deadspin in the upcoming sports website wars, my loyalties are entirely undivided. Deadspin is a trainwreck nowadays. Daulerio is utterly without talent and wouldn't be even in this conversation if he wasn't BFFs with Will Leitch (also, see this: http://mgoblog.com/content/aj-daulerio-asshole).

Frankly, I'd rather not declare allegiance at all, or rather, note that there's at least one other way. A bunch of sites seem to be doing a good job of melding top-notch writing with humor, all while focusing on one area and cutting out the Razzie analysis and rumors about middle-management drug use. In the world of college football, edsbs.com is one; the aforelinked mgoblog is another (at least when Brian Cook is writing).

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Fire Phil Emery

I agree that Deadspin has gone downhill for the last few years (the TMZification of the site sucks)and I don't see Grantland and Deadspin in direct competition, except in one area that Deadspin wins: the FUNBAG! is more consistent and more amusing than the sportsguy's mailbag. Drew Magary is the best part of deadspin right now.

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Fire Phil Emery

As a HUGE fan of Simmons from like 03-06 and then not so much and then gone away enough where I can read him again...

Mailbag looks the same. A couple really funny lines. A couple analogies taken waaaaay too far and a couple mild chuckles.


I didnt follow the launch and mission statement of this site but how is G-Land supposed to be diffrent than the Sports Guy page at ESPN.COM?

Not sure what their mission statement is. It differs from the SG site mainly in that there is more content, better writers, more interesting and eclectic take on things. Overall all the writers there seem to share Simmons sense and style of writing for the most part, for better or worse.

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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

This is what im referencing, I should have just quoted it originally


What are you talking about Willis?

I was a much bigger fan of Simmons when he seemed to care about writing his column. Once he started doing podcasts, PTI, and other stuff he seemed to mail it in too often on the articles. There were still some gems but mostly it was mailbag, NBA column that was 20% interesting and 80% too long, NFL picks, and somehow comparing The Wire and the World Cup.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

"Page 2, but with footnotes and swearing."

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

I disagree. I've already seen some much better pieces on there than I did the past decade on Page 2. I agree that 98% of the time the swearing seems forced and way too often a crutch to emphasize a point.

_________________
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

It wants to be something more than Page 2, and I think it is. It wants to be an internet clearinghouse for thought pieces on sports, plus with enough "I remember that!" stuff to keep page hits up.

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Fire Phil Emery

I count two so far in the latter category, and I would hope they are not satisfied with their progress on the second goal you mentioned. They are roughly where I thought they'd be at right now, and I'm curious to see if they settle into a comfortable routine of mediocrity or if they continue to evolve and seperate themselves from a plethora of similar sites. If this is the finished product they still intend to be putting out next summer and going forward I will be disappointed.

_________________
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

This is good news because now he isn't under the ESPN contract where he wasnt aloud to go on the Adam Carolla Podcast (which is a very entertaining podcast by the way)

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"Having Adam Dunn as your Designated Hitter is like Having Billy Joel as your Designated Driver"
The Great Stephen Colbert

How Big is Your Buona?

David Haugh WHO ARE YO CRAPPIN??

I'm pretty sure ESPN is funding the whole thing. Mightve heard wrong though.

_________________
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

Yes, this is an ESPN project. But Simmons supposedly has enough pull that it is about as independent as an ESPN project can be.

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Fire Phil Emery

I'm officially a fan of Carles from the site. I could do without the over the top hipster language but his recent article on music and the industry these days is terrific

_________________
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

Simmons was on PTI at least a few times this week so must be connected with ESPN.
Check out his porn stache.....

http://deadspin.com/5828885/yup-this-is ... s-mustache

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

In 10-15 years he'll look exactly like his old man

_________________
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 have nothing against female writers (or voters, or even drivers), but why does Simmons go out of his way to hire females who write like they are auditioning for Tiger Beat?

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/3042/dispatches-from-a-day-at-the-races

First off, anyone who goes to Saratoga for a burger is a straight up douche. There's a ton of great food at the track, not least of which the chicken sandwich from Hattie's, and several other restaurants from the area have setups at the track with reasonable duplications of their food.

Second, how do you spend 800 words saying absolutely nothing about something? I mean, try to do that sometime. It's almost impossible, even if you are trying to annoy the piss out of people.

Third, a jockey takes you on a tour around Saratoga, and all you get out of it is that he says some horses don't run well in mud?

Fourth, IMU has never written more condescending sentences than this:

I'm happy the hoi polloi bring you such happiness.

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Fire Phil Emery

Decent piece about Don DeLillo and his novel Underworld on the site this week. It's not quite an article but a collection of emails exchanged between the writer and DeLillo about the genesis of the story. The novel at a very basic level is about the famous "Shot Heard 'Round the World" by Bobby Thomson and the fictional path the baseball takes over the years from being caught in the stands to winding up in the possession of the novel's protagonist.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood ... f-recently

"See, the thing about Shia LeBeouf is, he's awful. But on the other hand, that's what makes him so awesome."

Good to know there's a website I can visit whenever I feel like tasting my own bile.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/842 ... l-athletes


Man.

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For anyone who still doubts that Grantland is just the absolute worst, I submit to you a podcast in which Chuck Klosterman interviews Jeff fucking Probst.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Bill Barnwell and Zach Lowe are useful reads on Grantland. I still enjoy Bill Simmons columns. I dont really pay attention to anything else on the website. I dont know who Jeff Probst is.

_________________
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 love the Jalen Rose podcasts.

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Kid Cairo's Boers & Bernstein YouTube Channel

Kid Cairo: 2013 March Madness Tournament Winner!

"Cowabunga? Cowa fucking piece of dog shit! This game is diarrhea coming out of my dick!"

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

No surprise that Grantland came about shortly after "30 for 30" took off. Guessing ESPN doens't mind
paying Simmons' friends to write for a smaller audience than they'd have on ESPN.com itself b/c
ESPN's making bank on '30 for 30'--thanks to Simmons.

There's no way Grantland's ads cover the costs of the writers/site. Andrew Sullivan's trying a subscription model, and
that's a possibility that Grantland could move to--once they've built up a sufficient/loyal audience. It's what Roger Ebert
turned to when he couldn't make much on his site via banner ads alone:

http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journa ... -will-work

Ebert has a good point about micropayments--people will easily spend 99 cents on a song on itunes or a new app from the Android market, but will click off in disgust when asked to pay for written content on the web.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.