We're hours away from the launch of the Bill Simmons-helmed website Grantland.com (if that sentence is gibberish to you, you might as well go hang out here for a while). Will it be a massive success like Rocky II? Or will it fail miserably like Rocky V? Will it find a large, engaged audience like the first three seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210? Or will it flail around aimlessly like the last three seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210? Will it blah blah blah something The White Shadow season one? Or will it blah blah blah The White Shadow season three? Will it it blah blah Survivor? Blah blah blah Real World Road Rules Challenge? Blah Friday Night Lights? Blah blah The Bachelor? Can I come up with even more lines referencing crap in an unsubtle nod to the Sports Guy? Or have I run out of ideas? Well, I've run out of ideas, kiddies, so, anyway, here are a few of my thoughts on Grantland.com.
Why it Will Succeed -
Bill Simmons is the Most Popular Sportswriter in America (TM)
And Why It Won't -
Wait. Scratch that. He doesn't actually write anymore. As Bill battles an ancient Harper Lee for the "J.D. Salinger Memorial Award for the Most Famous Writer Who Doesn't Actually Write," his writing output has trickled to a column every week. And that's if you're lucky. During the last six months or so, as he has presumably been preparing for the Grantland.com launch, his output has fallen to even less than that. In fact, we've seen one of the more entertaining NBA seasons in recent memory fly by with nary a word from Bill, save for the occasional tweet.
Bill probably couldn't have picked a less serendipitous time to quit writing. He's trying to launch a sportswriting website and half a generation of Internet Children (he started podcasting and not-writing in early 2007) now know him as "Bill Simmons, the BS Report Podcast guy who shows up occasionally on Adam Carolla's podcast and who chats with JackO about the Yankees," and not "Bill Simmons, the man who once wrestled the Most Famous Sportswriter in America (TM) mantle from guys like Rick Reilly and" . . . .well, to be honest, Rick Reilly is the only other famous sportswriter I can think of right now. Is John Feinstein still alive? And did he write books about sports or am I making that up? I do that sometimes.
Anyway, Bill has replaced the bulk of his writing duties with The BS Report podcasts for espn.com (sometimes as many as three a week). Without question, the podcasts have done exceedingly well and he has situated himself squarely among the top ten or so most popular podcasters in America. That would be great if he was starting a podcast website. But he's not. Rather, he is starting a website centered presumably on long-form sportswriting, with an occasional pop culture bent.
The Sports Guy descended from Mount Worldwide Leader to say that Grantland.com will be about 70% sports and 30% pop culture. Will Bill Simmons' writing even be featured on Grantland.com. Will his columns still appear on the espn.com frontpage? Will he be featured on both? Will his 14,000 word column about how The Karate Kid II is like the Miami Heat's playoff run appear out of place on a website populated by more literary offerings? Are there even going to be more literary offerings? Or will it be like gawker.com but with balls . . . um, sports balls, I mean . . . like footballs and baseballs. Lots of questions.
So it remains to be seen what sort of form Grantland.com will take. The two samples released consisted of (1) A list of just about every forthcoming Summer movie with brief asides and jokes to accompany the entries (so it is exactly the same as 99% of the blogs written about movies on the internet) and (2) A long column called "The Garden of Good and Evil" which I only sort of skimmed because, well, you know, it's fucking long. Fine, fine, you caught me: I only glossed over the first paragraph and then left to look at pictures of cats with stuff on them.
Yeah, that's the stuff.
Anyway . . .
It's in that last little bit that we find what may be Grantland.com's Achilles' heel, the chink in its armor, its soft underbelly, the . . . okay, I've run out of synonyms: The Culture of tl;dr.
(tl;dr - Too long; didn't read, for all you Internet noobs out there)
(Noobs - Newcomers)
(Internet - This magical place that holds all the porn in the world and pictures of cats with stuff on them. Also, famous people's penises)
Will people stick around to read 12,000 word articles about the culture of corruption at USC? Perhaps they will. There's a market for that. But even if Bill succeeds in balancing the long-form with the quick hits that people want from their internet, what will he have accomplished other than creating deadspin.com part II? And why didn't he just walk out the door flipping the Worldwide Leader two middle fingers and tell the Deadspin guys he wants in?
Why It Will -
Hey! Sports! Everybody loves sports! And pop culture!
And Why It Won't -
There will never be any sports ever again! Ever! Everrrrrrrr!!!
Well, maybe there will be at some point in the distance future. But let's just say that Bill has definitely upped the degree of difficulty by starting a sports website at a time when the NFL and the NBA might be going away to that nice farm in the country to run free and frolic for a while.
And honestly the "pop culture" element to the website seems like some quaint holdover from the late nineties, early oughts. It's been done. It's been done better by others. It's been done for a long long time. Paris Hilton's now some middle aged woman with a line of handbags. Please don't put her on your webpage.
Why It Will -
These are the consulting editors:
Chuck Klosterman
Malcolm Gladwell
Dave Eggers
And Why It Won't -
What sort of long-term relationship can we expect these three to have with the site? They are all successful writers in their own right. Will they stick around to edit Bill's vanity site? And what will the nature of their editorial role be? Will it include a couple of columns a year? Will they be acting in more of an advisory role? Are they mainly there to have their names on the masthead?
Of the three, Klosterman makes the most sense, a pop culture ying to balance Bill's sports yang, and the two have a good rapport on Bill's podcast. Gladwell and Eggers make considerably less sense. Eggers has a very successful memoir and lackluster fiction and seems more interested in Hollywood these days. Gladwell's written some very popular pop-science books that get a lot of press and not much academic respect. Gladwell's at least been a guest on The BS Report. I have no idea why Eggers in this mix, though he does have a great track record of attaching himself to the right people.
Why It Will -
ESPN could care less about throwing a few million dollars away on a vanity project for one of their most popular personalities.
And Why It Won't -
Worst.
Name.
Ever.
Period.
Full Stop.
Do Not Pass Go.
Do Not Collect $200.
But seriously . . . yeah, that name sucks. Like an industrial vacuum cleaner stuck on "high" with a black hole for a power-source sucks. MegaSucks. Though this issue does bring about the question as to what a Bill Simmons website should be named. In naming his site Grantland, Bill has purposely steered away from the sort of Bill Simmons-esque name one might expect from a website he's running. Remember the first incarnation of his podcast? Eye of the Sportsguy? Yeah, like that.
So instead of Sweep the Leg the Website or The Many Faces of Manning the Website, we're stuck with a website named after a sportswriter from the twenties who nobody has ever heard of. And do not lie to me and say you have heard of him. He has grandchildren. They have not heard of him. [Editor's Note: It's not entirely clear from the Internet if he has grandchildren, but whatever.]
Why It Will -
He's still the Most Popular Sportswriter in America (TM)
And Why It Won't -
Bill is a fickle, fickle man. Off the top of my head, here is a list of Bill Simmons' projects that he has dropped soon after starting:
The Curious Guy Columns
Top 73 Sports Movie List (where he succeeded in ranking all of nine movies before abandoning the idea)
That putrid Sports Guy Cartoon that appeared on espn.com (though I'm not sure if he had much involvement in this or not)
Writing for Jimmy Kimmel's late night talkshow
Remember: We are talking about a guy who's first book was just a collection of articles he had already written with footnotes attached and whose most popular columns are answers to readers' questions and the aptly-titled "Ramblings."
Recently, Bill has found much success as the executive producer of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary project. The idea behind the series is that each documentary is the vision of a director who has substantial creative control. Bill's involvement in each individual episode appears minimal.
Perhaps it is in this model that we find the most likely path to success for Grantland.com: Bill Simmons staying for the most part the fuck out of the way. He has hired some very talented people to write for Grantland.com -
Michael Weinreb
Katie Baker
Molly Lambert
Chris Ryan
Robert Mays III
Bill Barnwell
Patrice Evans
Robert Mays III
Bill Barnwell
Patrice Evans
Sure, I haven't heard of any of these people, but they haven't heard of me either . . . um, I'm sure they are all great writers is what I meant to say.
If Grantland.com is going to succeed outside the wing of Mother ESPN it's going to be because it becomes something more than just Bill Simmons' columns with fuck-bombs . . . or, ummm, f-bombs . . . I guess fuck-bombs is sort of self-defeating. It's going to become a website powered by the writing of the best writers that Worldwide money can pluck from internet's feathery bosom.
And if Bill fails, he is always welcome to come write for me. Sure, I don't "pay money" or "have readers," but I have a little something called "gumption." And that's a lot of what you need in this wild, wild, World Wide Web. Well, that and "money" and "readers" and . . . you know what? Fuck it. Good job making Deadspin again, Bill. Just remember to send them a check every first of the month.
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