The Grantland sports/pop culture website, inspired and formerly led by Bill Simmons, was shut down today by ESPN.

Here is the ESPN media release on it.

Some media reports suggested the site lost gobs of money, which is easy to believe given the number and competence of its many contributors, which could not have been inexpensive, against any obvious advertising — as well as the lack of a paywall.

From that perspective, having learned the hard way about corporate entities and their need to burnish the bottom line, ESPN pulling the plug seems like no surprise.

But I will miss the site, for several reasons.

How do I know?

–I went looking for it tonight and then remembered, “Oh, yeah, it’s gone.” Meaning that the site had become something I had looked at reflexively. I can’t say that for many sites, particularly sports sites. (ESPN itself is pretty much only for scores and boxscores.)

–It was one of the few sites, in an era of 20-photo galleries and sensational nothingness meant to draw clicks but not actually inform, that allowed its writers to carry on at length. “Long-form” journalism we call it, and I have never had a problem with 10,000 words; if it’s good enough, I will stay with a writer for that long.

–I probably got a significant fraction of my pop-culture news and views, particularly in regard to movies and TV, from the site. Andy Greenwald, in particular. Someone intelligent, with an informed opinion? That is a draw.

No, I did not devour everything on Grantland, and sometimes in some of its most basic categories.

Its young-ish writers covering the major pro sports dealt in absolutes revealed to them by the latest metrics, and it was hard to deal with that certainty as well as spending time to understand the metric. It was as if they didn’t believe their own eyes; they needed the numbers.

Overall, the site — even at the end, after several writers and editors had exited — was part of my daily internet routine.

Also, it was never a site that chased hits. No galleries. No calling out of other sites or writers; that was a Simmons concept, and I appreciated it.

Looking back, it will seem obvious the site was probably doomed once Simmons had his rupture with ESPN, which happened back in May. He was the centerpiece of the production, and it seemed a little less interesting with him gone — and I imagine ESPN never got past the “Bill Simmons stink” they could still detect at grantland.com.

(Which opens up the whole question of “if Simmons could stop fighting with corporate execs, would Grantland still be alive today?” Probably yes.)

Perhaps the only upside to this?

I found out that Sports on Earth is still in business. I thought it was gone but, no, they’ve just been irrelevant.

Grantland’s demise could be a boon for SoE; I looked at them today for the first time in a year, and I even opened a story or three.

But there were reasons why Grantland was a daily destination, and SoE is not, and I see no obvious substitute for what is gone.