Fish And Chipps: A proper farewell to Grantland

In 2015, 98 percent of the words published on the World Wide Web are straight garbage.

There’s no creativity, no foresight and no thought whatsoever. Just garbage.

Plain and simple.

In today’s non-stop world, time is of the essence. If we only have 24 hours in a day, then we must sift through that garbage on the Internet to find the words that actually mean something.

And that’s what I loved about Grantland. Its words actually meant something, whether it was a 5,000-word piece on the Houston Rockets’ 3-point offensive efficiency, a 6,000-word feature on American water parks or a 1,000-word breakdown of the all-important #SQUAD formed during the Bar Mitzvah years.

Grantland’s words were always worth our precious time, because unlike 98 percent of the World Wide Web, it added context and value to whatever it was we were witnessing in the sports or pop culture world.

But in case you haven’t heard on Twitter or other social media, Grantland was handed its “et tu Brute?” moment and was extinguished by its overlord, ESPN.

ESPN announced Oct. 30 that Grantland would be suspended indefinitely, thereby officially ending its legendary four-year run.

“Effective immediately we are suspending the publication of Grantland,” ESPN said in a statement. “After careful consideration, we have decided to direct our time and energy going forward to projects that we believe will have a broader and more significant impact across our enterprise.”

In other words, the era of outside-the-box writing, documentary production and everything else Bill Simmons brought to the “World Wide Leader in Sports” — which included but was not limited to wild trips to Las Vegas, mailbags and oral histories — has officially come to an end. For all young, aspiring sportswriters, such as myself and many of my friends, this is truly a sad state of affairs.

Grantland is gone.

A lot of things on the Internet deserve to be crucified, but Grantland wasn’t one of them.

In its four-year run, ESPN’s boutique website was a lot of things: it was funny, interesting, unique, nerdy, analytical, ambitious and way ahead of its time.

It was a website that, after some initial trouble, came to have a distinct and unique voice in the sports and pop culture world.

When Grantland launched in 2011, I was a high school senior who longed for a place on the World Wide Web that was more than just a recap of last night’s games with the standard lede, quote and blah blah blah.

I gravitated to Grantland because it represented the cool kids of journalism.

I always imagined the Grantland crew of writers as the kids you sat with at the lunch table talking about all the hypothetical theories and “what if’s” of sports (Isn’t that what you did during lunch?).

As I’ve matured and grown as a journalist, writer and blogger, I’ve come to realize how much of an effect Grantland has had on my own writing.

When I read the work of writers like Rembert Browne, Brian Phillips, Molly Lambert, Holly Anderson, Charlie Pierce and everyone else who was a Grantland regular, I learned how to invoke “voice” in my own writing.

When I read the features of Jonathan Abrams and Bryan Curtis, I learned how to add intimate detail and structure to my stories.

When I read the analysis of Bill Barnwell and Zach Lowe, I learned how to look at sports with a different lens. Instead of just trying to figure out “what’s happening”, I realized that the real question should always be, “why is it happening?”

Grantland was never a financial success, but it was a creative masterpiece.

You may love Bill Simmons. You may hate Bill Simmons. But you must at least respect “The Sports Guy” for having a unique vision with a site that, at its peak, was one of the best things the World Wide Web had to offer.

Simmons helped pushed sports writing out of the Stone Age and into the 21st century. Grantland was his Mona Lisa, and she was goddamn beautiful.

When Simmons left ESPN back in May, it was inevitable that Grantland would soon after be executed. Based on multiple reports, the relationship between Grantland and ESPN — or whatever was left of it — was severed as soon as Simmons was axed.

For all the people out there who love sports and pop culture as much as I do, let’s take a moment to thank all of the writers and editors at Grantland who gave us a unique place on the Internet to explore those hypothetical theorems, oral histories, mailbags and 5,000-word feature stories that took us all over the world and to some really strange places (Including one of my favorite recent longform pieces by Molly Lambert on the Adult Video News Awards).

Grantland made journalism a better place, and for young writers like me, it showed us that journalism doesn’t have to be bland — it can even be sexy too.

May you rest in peace, Grantland, and thanks for making journalism cool again. Thanks for telling amazing stories, creating a platform that mattered and being the most dope site on the World Wide Web.

From all of the people out there who love the written word, you will be truly missed.