Bill Simmons’ Grantland debuted on June 8th with a great deal of fanfare in sports writing circles, and has now gone dark just 11 days later, the victim of oversight. Specifically, someone forgot to renew the site’s domain name, which expired June 13, so the site either needs to be renewed or it will be deleted. As of 4:16 p.m., the site looks like this to the right. According to Network Solutions, which owns the domain, “Once a domain name has been renewed, it may take up to 48 hours to be reactivated.”
So even if someone from Grantland (or ESPN.com) runs down to Network Solutions with a handful of quarters right now, there’s no guarantee the site will be back up and running before Tuesday. In the meantime schadenfreude among jealous sportswriters runs wild.