ESPN and Grantland have contracted McSweeney's to handle the production and distribution (which, in retrospect, explains why Dave Eggers is a Grantland contributing editor).

As such, the basketball leather-bound books will harbor twee custom moving parts, like posters, a pull-out section, "old-school baseball cards" and mini-booklets. The first volume is available through the McSweeney's store; individual issues cost $19.95 and a year-long subscription (four issues) is $48.

In addition to some of the more memorable Grantland features (Malcolm Gladwell on the NBA lockout and Colson Whitehead on the World Series of Poker, for example), the first volume includes an original column by Mr. Simmons and new fiction from Jess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of Poets.

Grantland Quarterly has always been a part of the ESPN-sponsored website's business plan, according to Mr. Fierman.

"If our site has a problem it's that we move so fast that readers miss stuff," he said. The print journal serves up the site's greatest hits in a medium better suited to long-form journalism. Plus, nostalgia runs rampant among Grantland's roster of magazine writers.

"I miss the feel of print," the former GQ editor told The Observer. "It’s good to be back in it."

The ongoing rivalry between ESPN’s Grantland blog, founded by Page 2 star Bill Simmons, and Gawker Media’s Deadspin is shaping up to be more entertaining than anything either blog covers on the field.

For a second, it seemed Deadspin was losing yardage to Grantland, which had seen its buzz steadily increase since ESPN announced a writerly line-up including Molly Lambert, Lane Brown and Deadspin’s own Katie Baker. In a New York Times Magazine profile last week, Mr. Simmons aimed a barely veiled jibe at the home of the Brett Favre dong shots.

“The worst thing that’s happening [to sportswriting] is that people are writing things just to drive traffic and get attention,” he told the Times.

Simultaneously, Grantland editor Daniel Fierman (formerly of GQ) had been putting the moves on Deadspin senior editor Tommy Craggs, eventually offering him a position. But ESPN put Mr. Cragg’s offer on hold after he wrote a mocking blog post on Deadspin about ESPN.com editor Lynne Hoppes. Discussions were tabled pending a make-nice lunch with ESPN exec John Walsh.

Then, Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio began narrating the drawn-out hiring process with the same giddy bloodlust the site has shown in its coverage of other ESPN operations, despite admitting that “someone close to the situation” had warned him that doing so further jeopardized Mr. Cragg’s employability there. “He still works at Deadspin and I still work at Deadspin and this is a story we’d cover had any other potential Grantland writer become entangled in such stupidity,” Mr. Daulerio wrote.

He then promptly sent a pink gorilla singing telegram to Mr. Cragg’s lunch with Mr. Walsh at the Essex House. She sang the SportsCenter theme song. (Watch for that on the expense account, Nick Denton.)

Mr. Craggs and Mr. Daulerio separately told Off the Record that Mr. Daulerio’s actions hadn’t sabotaged Mr. Cragg’s shot, and that the discussion had already deteriorated. Mr. Daulerio added that no Gawker Media blog expects to keep employees forever, but that the process illuminated the appeal of working at Deadspin.

That doesn’t mean the competition has calmed down. Mr. Daulerio recently hired Tom Scocca, a former Slate blogger who on his last day posted—what else?—a critique of Grantland’s hype. Around the same time, Chris Jones—whose writing Mr. Scocca has eviscerated on Slate—was named a Grantland contributor.

Better yet, Mr. Jones’s interactions with Mr. Scocca seem to have left him willing to play at Deadspin’s level. In this month’s Esquire he has a short piece called “How to Win an Internet Feud.” “There is a school of thought that fighting on the Internet is childish and foolish,” Mr. Jones wrote. “That school of thought is populated mostly by sanctimonious pussies and old people.”

Game on!

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel

The most thorough (and lengthy) of these takedowns was posted today at the blog MrDestructo.com. This one is notable for being thousands of words long and for characterizing the rhetorical structure of Mr. Simmons' columns as "Baby's First Hegelian Dialectic."

But why would anybody care so much about Grantland? Or rather, what is it about the conceit of this particular project that makes a particular subset of sports writers and media columnists so very angry? It seems to come down to the site's characterization as "literary." For an aggrieved few who have been carrying around tattered copies of Grantland Rice's books since early adolescence, Bill Simmons has apparently cheapened everything they hold sacred. "Bill Simmons is just a bro," these critics keep shouting, to anyone who listens. "A corporate bro who doesn't read books!"

Anyway, this is caustic vitriol at its purest:

Even fans of his would concede that a Bill Simmons Culture Museum could be housed in a newlyweds' guest room, with four walls tacked with Bobby Orr, Pedro Martinez, Tom Brady and Larry Bird jerseys, with a single chair facing a TV/DVD cabinet stocked with copies of The Shawshank Redemption, The Karate Kid, sports movies, John Hughes movies, Pacino/De Niro movies and a complete set of Miami Vice and The White Shadow episodes. Die-hard fans can probably name only five non-sports books he's ever read (and three of them are by Malcolm Gladwell). On the TV front, Simmons spent a few years proudly reminding people of his refusal to watch shows like House, The Wire or Arrested Development.

[Mr. Destructo]

According to Twitter, the lineup so far is: Chuck Klosterman, who, though first known for his music writing, has worked extensively with Simmons and ESPN; Katie Baker, Deadspin's superheroine (banker by day, blogger by night) and generally beloved internet person; and Lane Brown, of New York magazine's Vulture.

This is shaping up to be a big deal--he's hiring 8-12 fulltime "quality writers," plus freelancers, reports Sports Business Daily.

Looks like we have to start caring about sports now!

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel