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Blue Jackets Take Shot at ‘Grantland’ Over Bill Simmons Mailbag Question

Stephen Douglas

Bill Simmons had the Blue Jackets burn him on X this week.
Bill Simmons had the Blue Jackets burn him on X this week. / Photo by Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Spotify
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The Columbus Blue Jackets have been in the NHL for a quarter of a century. They have made the Stanley Cup playoffs six times and won just one postseason series in their franchise history.

These are all things The Ringer's Bill Simmons brought up while trying to determine who the "most irrelevant franchise in professional sports" is during the podcast reboot of his mailbag column on a podcast earlier this week. The question was sent in by a Blue Jackets fan who also made the case that his favorite team was completely irrelevant.

Simmons tried to come up with a less relevant franchise, but ultimately agreed it was probably the Blue Jackets before moving on to the next question.

On Wednesday Awful Announcing posted about all this and tweeted a link at 1:05pm. Less than two hours later the Blue Jackets' official account tweeted at Awful Announcing saying, "tried to go to grantland to read the full article but got a 404" with a thinking face. They did not @ Simmons, so there's no way to know if he even saw it.

Some people agreed with the Blue Jackets. Some agreed with Simmons.

Whatever side you want to take, Grantland still exists in archived format. And Simmons went on to found The Ringer and sell that to Spotify for a ton of money. The Blue Jackets probably would have been better off leaving that one alone, but based on the 100 retweets, that decision probably isn't relevant either.

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Stephen Douglas
STEPHEN DOUGLAS

Stephen Douglas is a senior writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has worked in media since 2008 and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Douglas spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and previously wrote for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.

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