Links: Grantland

A little background - Grantland Rice was a sports writer who rose to fame in the 1930s. Mr. Rice recognized that athletic competition was a rich metaphor for much larger things. To that end, he turned what used to be matter-of-fact descriptions of sporting events into elegant commentary, like this poem, "Game Called":



Rice was so influential that ESPN writer Bill Simmons named his sports and pop culture writing website "Grantland" as a tribute. The writing at Grantland is pretty good (though some people go heavy on the David Foster Wallace-style sidenotes), and the clean site design is a refreshing break from the busy, social-media-ized main ESPN website. If you're the type of person who's interested in more than the surface-level X's and O's, Grantland's worth a look.