Tonight is a perfect storm of sports. There are two Game 7s in the NHL playoffs, eight NBA teams playing for better seeding on the final night of the regular season, and the NFL draft begins. Thus, there could not be a better night for Grantland Live.
Sunday was the debut of @GrantlandLive, the new Twitter feed where you'll find our live tweets for big games, important events, and … uh … other stuff, to be determined later. Thanks to those who followed Lakers-Celtics with us. We're looking forward to the next one!
At LAL-Celts and Rondo is wearing sunglasses in the layup line. Hmmmmmm. PS: Taking my tweets over to @grantlandlive during the game.
— Bill Simmons (@sportsguy33) March 11, 2012
BS: Kobe is wearing a necklace with Rubio's ACL dangling from it. I think that's totally inappropriate.
— Grantland Live (@GrantlandLive) March 11, 2012
We'll be live tweeting along with the Celtics-Lakers game this Sunday over at @GrantlandLive, starting at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Follow us to [INSERT FUNNY CELTICS JOKE HERE AAAHHHH!].
On July 28, Jared Bloom started the Twitter feed @fakegrantland, filled with what purported to be rejected stories from this website. We quickly realized they were better than a lot of what we were coming up with in our ideas meeting and greenlit them. (Not really.) Here are excerpts from the best of the (totally made-up) stories he came up with this month:
"Schott Caller: The 1990 Reds Playoff Run and the Birth of Midwest Hip Hop"
"... although, in fairness, his flow is only a little bit whack.
If Jose Rijo was the Reds' Nelly, then Chris Sabo was clearly its Bone Thugs. He brought harmony to a team that was delicately balancing the heavy-breathing gangsta lean of Rob Dibble with the studied stoicism of Ken Griffey, Sr. Is it any wonder, then, that 'Tha Crossroads' was released almost exactly 5 years and 7 months after Piniella and the Reds lifted the World Series trophy? ..."
On Wednesday night, longtime Penn State coach Joe Paterno was fired. Everybody knows why, right? Right. Everybody knows why now, because someone has finally briefed Ashton Kutcher.
Last night Kutcher sent the following tweet, which has been deleted, after learning that Paterno was out at Penn State: "How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste."
It was not well received. You'll find Kutcher's subsequent Twitter meltdown below, including some tweets that have since been wiped from his feed.
We've got a bona fide Twitter superstar on the podcast! Logan Morrison, left fielder for the Marlins and proprietor of the excellent Twitter feed @LoMoMarlins, joins the show to talk about the virtues of on-base percentage, his thoughts on clubhouse chemistry, his own rising career, what it was like to almost get traded for Ozzie Guillen, and how he plans to adjust when the Tampa Bay Rays inevitably swoop in and trade for him. He also weighs in on the World Series.
Then Jon "Boog" Sciambi, ESPN broadcaster deluxe and friend of the show checks in from St. Louis. We talk about insider vs. outsider access, gaps in human cognition, the meaning of sample sizes, and whether or not Bernie Williams was the biggest choker of all-time. (Spoiler alert: he wasn't.)
1. Arian Foster, running back, Houston Texans
By all accounts, Arian Foster is something of a new-age goofball. His father actually named him after the Age of Aquarius, he majored in philosophy at Tennessee, he writes poetry, and he named his child Zeniah Egypt, in part because of his high regard for Discovery Channel programming. He is not the prototypical NFL mercenary, and so perhaps we should not have been surprised that Foster tweeted this spiritual observation about a hamstring injury that could keep him from playing in the Houston Texans’ season opener:
4 those sincerely concerned, I'm doing ok & plan 2 B back by opening day. 4 those worried abt your fantasy team, u ppl are sickless than a minute ago via Twittelator 
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Arian Foster
ArianFoster
Now, let me preface this by restating a truism that needs to be posted on billboards and sports blogs in 72-point type, like a surgeon general’s warning:
NO ONE GIVES A DAMN ABOUT YOUR FANTASY TEAM, NO WILL EVER GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOUR FANTASY TEAM, AND NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR COMPLAINTS ABOUT YOUR FANTASY TEAM.
On Saturday, Shane Battier broadcast a complaint via Twitter.
"Why does the Little League World Series stop becoming a double elimination tourney at the American and foreign champ games? Makes no sense," he tweeted.
My first reaction when I saw this tweet wasn't to wonder why Battier, a professional basketball player, cared about fair play in youth baseball. Instead, I nodded my head, and felt a tiny bit vindicated. I'd been annoyed about the same thing all day, and thank god for Twitter, because where else could I find a venue for addressing the unfairness of something so … small?
Life is filled with nuance and compromise. Luckily, Kevin Wildes has sorted through it all for our weekly feature, Winners and Losers.
Grantland’s fearless leader on Monday appeared on national television with a mustache.
The decision was met with mixed reaction. There were a few celebrity comparisons, more than a few porn jokes, and … well, OK, mostly horror.
Below you'll find some of our favorite Mustache Monday tweets. Weigh in on Bill Simmons’ mustache on Twitter (where it now has its own handle … uh, thanks, guy?) or leave us a comment on Facebook.
In an effort to make sense of all the activities athletes are partaking in on Twitter, we've come up "What Are Athletes … ?" It addresses the various things athletes share on the Internet.
In case you aren't prone to clicking through LeBron James tweets when he references lemonade stand sellers, you may have missed this picture of King James wearing a T-shirt that reads "AKRON" but is styled like the Miami Heat logo. It's unclear as to what he's trying to convey here, but my gut tells me the people of Akron won't be thrilled about this!
