In the week since ESPN announced it was shuttering Grantland, something was missing among the wave of responses, eulogies and think-pieces: A statement from the man who made the actual decision, ESPN president John Skipper.
.@thachase Many have said there’s been one big missing piece of @espn @Grantland33 puzzle; this is that. Hope you agree.
— James Andrew Miller (@JimMiller) November 8, 2015
But leave it to ESPN oracle Jim Miller to finally score that conversation, and glean some insight previously unavailable to observers and fans eager to hear what factored into this process. Was it purely a financial choice, considering the cost-cutting mandate that the network received from its corporate bosses at Disney? Was this a vindictive move, intended to cut off a piece of Bill Simmons’ legacy at ESPN?
In a piece published Sunday night by Vanity Fair, Skipper said the decision was his and his alone:
“I made the decision,” Skipper says flatly. “There was no influence from [ESPN corporate parent] Disney on this. And I made sure that I divorced my feelings about Bill [Simmons] from this decision because I would never let that affect the people who are there.”
Skipper went on to explain to Miller that he underestimated just how closely Grantland’s staff aligned itself with Simmons, just how close that bond was. Had he understood the culture that Simmons and his staff established, he likely would not have installed Chris Connelly as an interim editor-in-chief.
The ESPN president insists that the sides for and against keeping Grantland alive were rather fairly divided up until the end. And had editor Sean Fennessey agreed to stay on and take over as the site’s editor-in-chief, Grantland would probably still be running.
But as Miller writes, the process was essentially already poisoned when Connelly was named to succeed Simmons rather than Fennessey, which fostered an environment of uncertainly and distrust. With that, rumors and speculation over ESPN’s future plans for Grantland, including a reduction in resources and the elimination of pop culture content, festered.
Ultimately, Skipper’s decision came down to Grantland being a venture built around Bill Simmons and the culture surrounding the site operated within that aura. With Simmons gone, the benefits for ESPN diminished rapidly, leading to the final choice of shuttering the operation.
To the end, Skipper insists that he loved Grantland and the decision to shut it down was a difficult, painful one. Based on his comments to Miller, he does seem to second-guess himself a bit and wish he might have handled some matters differently. Yet given how insular the culture at Grantland seemed to be, would trying to keep the site alive have eventually been a failure, had Skipper tried to incorporate writers and content into the ESPN pool?
Obviously, that’s a question that will now never be answered.