On Friday, October 30, 2015, ESPN decided to permanently suspend publishing at Grantland, a sports and pop-culture site run by the company. Grantland, the brainchild of personality and writer Bill Simmons, had been publishing since summer of 2011. For many of us who followed the site, it had become more than that. Grantland was less an impersonal content-carrier and more an insightful friend.
****
The last time I saw Grantland, I was drinking my morning coffee before a 9 a.m. class. I hadn’t seen him in a few days because of meetings and work and the general business of life, but I was determined to take a moment and catch up.