So Much for Grantland

I think there were a number of people who had high hopes for Grantland. I think many of those hopes are now probably dashed, if they haven't been dashed already.

When it first came out, Grantland was supposed to give us something different about the popular culture. Bill Simmons promised something that would take his enthusiasm for sports writing and bring the pop culture sensibility that he had into a new mix and offer up something of quality. Or maybe he just wanted to write about things that interested him but couldn't because he was being paid to write about sports for ESPN.

This "rate the Stank" sort of thing is not what I expected to see on Grantland. I have been very impressed with the quality of the site until exactly now. I would have thought that someone could have taken this exact subject provided a different take on it. Rating divas one through ten and snarking about it doesn't exactly qualify. And picking Adele as number one is ludicrous--her voice could be gone. Dismissing Lady Gaga with a pithy one liner? How does that chase after something of a higher quality?

This is pretty much what you see on trashy celeb websites and Grantland has decided to stumble with them into the basement and giggle about nonsense. Compare how this sits next to Chuck Klosterman's take on Van Halen. A gushing barrage of pure, unadulterated enthusiasm for something as opposed to a piss-take on the obvious.

Talk about dashed hopes.