Well, this is embarrassing. Grantland had two heartening Father's Day stories up yesterday. Alas, the fathers could not read them at Grantland.com. The site was down, replaced by a picture of a smiling girl and Prince Harry's neck. From the look of things, the domain name registry had lapsed and hadn't been renewed. A registry search and some googling revealed the contact person for the domain to be a mysterious IT/communications expert out of Bali named Ken Grant, who does work for the Indonesian mining industry. I emailed Grant last night. He writes:
Grantland.com was a long time family website that chronicled our travels around the world among other things. About a month ago I sold the domain to the current owner. The registration that I had with Network Solution just lapsed. I did not renew it because I no longer have the domain. I assumed that they had already transferred the registration to another registrar.
Guess not. But Grantland.com is up and running again today, as Bill Simmons gradually figures out the series of tubes that is the internet. (Not that this sort of whoopsie daisy can't happen elsewhere.) Ken Grant didn't respond when I asked for specifics on his deal with Simmons. Let's hope he got some decent coin out of Grantland, which is bankrolled by ESPN, which is owned by Disney, which has cash like Uncle Scrooge.