Grantland.com is dead. The shutters are down, the only light remaining a single, unshaded bulb over the archives. So that’s what I wrote about for the Irish Times. It’s a love letter, of sorts. A love letter to something that, for a certain type of sports follower, had been a thing of sportswriting beauty.

It had felt odd wandering around the 2015 Web Summit hearing about various aspects of sport and “content”, after the closure of what I had considered one of great modern pillars of both. They hadn’t always got it right, but on the whole those four years of Grantland were something quite wonderful.

Published in the print edition of the Irish Times on Wednesday November 4th, 2015.

“It was a good run.” That’s what you see now when you visit the Grantland website. The archives are available but from here on there will be nothing new. The shutters have been pulled down. It was part of a rough couple of days for a certain type of sports follower.

After an initial three solid weeks filled with Rugby World Cup action on a seemingly nightly basis, the gaps between games had expanded to a full week. A cruel eternity, it seemed. Rugby fans experiencing the difficulty of having a steady dosage suddenly reduced; addicts being quickly weaned off their fix.

That was bad enough: the knowledge that such a wonderful tournament was ending. Especially cruel then for that weekend to coincide with the announcement by ESPN that they were shuttering the sports and pop culture mashup that was Grantland.

Created in 2011, the website had been an interesting experiment. Named after notable US sportswriting figure Grantland Rice, it was the brainchild of Bill Simmons. “The Sports Guy” had been ESPN’s golden boy, until he wasn’t. After a sticky period last year when he’d publically challenged the integrity of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in his “BS Report” podcast, he was suspended by his paymasters.

In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end…

Read more: http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/a-good-run-grantland-it-was-wonderful-while-it-lasted-1.2416015