Why? Because. Image: Flickr/EmmaBond
First, there’s nothing wrong with Grantland. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s fine.
As a landing spot for talented essayists yearning to boost their profile, it’s understandable.
As a home for willful expansion of silly twitter asides, Grantland is occasionally laudable.
Of course, Grantland also is a double-hit content marketing farm for ESPN based on editor Bill Simmons’ massive Q rating. It’s not a destination, but a worthwhile grazing stop.
But is Grantland also a lunchroom bully? Or, worse yet, a petty thief?
Hoping for erudite, but settling for cheeky, Grantland routinely appears to steal – er, borrow – items from other blogs who also compete for cubicle-dwelling, white-guy male viewers with one foot in perpetual adolescence.
Nothing’s totally wrong with this. It’s the Internet, common ground gets stomped the time. But if once is an accident, and twice is a coincidence, isn’t three is a trend? So what about all this?
The Grantland Staff Trades Emails Borrowing liberally from Football Outsiders’ excellent Audibles at the Line the day after NFL games. 
One difference: Audibles reads like an editors’ meeting, while Grantland is an unbearable afternoon on a fraternity couch.
Poster Decoder. Strangely, this weekly feature windows less than 24 hours after Filmdrunk’s This Week In Posters admonishes movie posters and diagonal lines.
Although if any poster deserves repeated and/or glorious barbs, it's this one.
Trailers of the Week. Borrows from Videogum’s Brooklyn-ific “This Week in Movie Trailers, You Guys, also windowing just minutes apart. Weird? Or hahahaha not weird at all.
Just Quinn, Brady. Repeatedly borrows entire Brady Quinn meme and NFL character narrative style from Kissing Suzy Kolber (Phil Rivers, Rex Ryan, Jerry Jones). This only ran twice, quelled immediately by a KSK smackdown.
About Last Night A title strikingly similar to Deadspin’s About Last Night (now Wake Up Deadspin.) Granted, this is completely fair use, and several popular blogs recap the previous night’s sports. But still, using the exact same tag as your primary competitor isn’t always the greatest marketing idea. Or it might be, no one really knows anymore.
Bake Shop. More fair use resembling Deadspin, this time aping the tone and goofiness of the Drew Magary Funbag, capitalizing on the impossible street cred of Katie Baker.
TV Recaps. Everyone does this (me included), but so does Grantland, of course. Just wanted that on the record. (Keep your hands off Franklin & Bash, smart alecks!)
Footnotes. Borrowed from research writers who actually discuss substance, instead of a clever “look-at-me” dumping ground for potshots that can’t be worked into the story.
Used to be full of critics. Now they write for Grantland.
Web sites and publications often intersect, and there’s certainly room for differing voices approaching similar topics.
When Grantland launched, we knew its stable of writers would jostle past lunchroom tables of Gawker, Uproxx, the Atlantic, stupid Slate, and the AV Club. But we also hoped for more than just a roughshod ride over ground well-trod.
Comedian Louis CK incidentally (and accidentally) described this “lunchroom effect” in an interview with Jonah Weiner.
“… I asked [the teacher] if you could take two words and combine them in one sentence, so he said yes, and my sentence was, “I want to take off my clothes and climb a building.” I made everybody laugh, then it became known that I did that, but then the other kids, the popular kids in the class, started doing their own versions, and I was forgotten: it just became a whole bunch of people doing that, and theirs weren’t funny. They were all private jokes about each other and stuff – sort of the way TV works now. I remember being disillusioned, like, this has been stolen from me and ruined.”
Just like that puffed-up jock ruined your lunchroom table of geeks. Once, it felt like home, all of you cracking jokes and smartly condemning your classmates.
That is, until the future TKE pledge overheard a golden quip. He plucked one of your friends for help on his English paper, promising access to the cool crowd. Soon, he blurts your lunchroom wisecrack in class to cheers and hollers, with nary an attribution, your former friend clapping approval.
Perhaps it’s natural. Perhaps it’s nothing. Perhaps I’m just a jealous hater, trolling for my own Grantland freelance contract. (Note: AVAILABLE)
But that’s how it works. A powerful site run by a massive blogging superstar with Disney at its back, Grantland can afford to break a few eggheads and critics. They’ve no qualms with hiring them later.
When Grantland‘s content infringes on other blog features, it’s dubious coincidence at best, and petty theft at worst, but probably not unethical at all. It certainly won’t slow down the machine.
But it does make the machine awfully forgettable.
