One of our favorite daily reading websites is without a doubt Grantland. Founded and helmed by Bill Simmons — author of Now I Can Die In Peace, The Book Of Basketball and a sports writer without equal — Grantland serves as the nexus of where sports collides with pop culture, and explodes in a fireworks of intelligent prose unlike anywhere else on the net. If you know Bill Simmons, aka The Sports Guy, he’s made a name for himself on ESPN by incorporating far-flung minutiae from the endless layers of the pop zeitgeist and expertly weaving them into his sports analogies, all the while constructing harebrained theories with nearly limitless corollaries that, when examined, are actually ultimately sound (try to disprove The Patrick Ewing Theory, I challenge you). He is a truly unique voice — a Red Sox-obsessed, Jersey Shore quoting, Celtic banner waving, list making, email bagging bishop of The Wire. And the writers he’s collected in his stable are all of like mind. Chuck Klosterman (he of Fargo Rock City and Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs fame) writes long thoughtful columns on the reunion of Van Halen with David Lee Roth; Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink, Outliers and The Tipping Point) engages in week-long email exchanges. A Howard Stern-like coterie of characters and sports figures come by for weekly podcasts. In the past couple weeks alone Grantland has commissioned a rare feature from Hua Hsu with one of our unsung heroes Chris Elliot, had Klosterman break down the upcoming Stanley Kubrick documentary Room 237 (where it’s argued that The Shining was a subliminal, semiotics-filled admission by Kubrick that he faked the moon landing for the US government), published an excerpt from the book Marvel Comics, The Untold Story, argued vehemently that Mad Men was the best show on television, argued vehemently that Breaking Bad was the best show on television, and even interviewed the long lost and criminally underrated auteur Whit Stillman. And yet it never takes itself too seriously — don’t be shocked to find a well argued deconstruction of the WWE’s tendencies to make villains of its most beloved heroes, for instance. Long story short, it’s where nerds meet sports, and sport nerds meet the undulating nooks and crannies of popular culture.

So that’s why we’re stoked on the third volume of the Grantland Quarterly — a hardcover print edition of the online magazine. Featuring the best writing from the previous 3 months of Grantland, the Quarterly gives you an opportunity to read the way it was intended: with the feel of paper between your fingers, and the smell of pulp in your nostrils. Published in collaboration with the highly selective McSweeney’s, the Grantland Quarterly can be picked up for only $20. Until then, bookmark Grantland and see for yourself if any of the headlines grab your interest…

via Gear Patrol