Over the weekend, I received the most heartbreaking news I’ve heard in weeks. I was devastated, and I’m still coming to terms with how my life will change in the wake of this tragedy.

Of course, I’m referring to ESPN’s decision to shut down its beloved sports and pop culture site, Grantland.com.

Now, I’m obviously being more than a little melodramatic in my characterization of ESPN’s business move as a reason for earnest mourning, but it does feel like I’ve lost an important part of my day-to-day life. Think of it like finishing a book in which you’ve begun to feel connected to the characters. In the same way I felt like I had lost Harry Potter and Ron Weasley upon finishing The Deathly Hallows, I now feel like I’m losing Sean McIndoe, Katie Baker and Brian Phillips – at least for a while.

There are few things I can say I do on a daily basis and even fewer I do with purpose, but reading Grantland was one of them. It’s what inspired me to pursue journalism – which, by extension, convinced me to enroll at St. Thomas – and it’s changed the way I consume literature, watch sports and view television.

Sean McIndoe introduced me to advanced stats in hockey and changed the way I watch and understand my favorite sport. Brian Phillips overhauled my perceptions of journalism and what it could be. Most of all, Bill Simmons showed me that sports aren’t really about sports at all – they’re an extension of ourselves and our own identity – and as Alex Shepherd and Mark Krotov wrote in New Republic, that’s what the site was all about.

“You were never just talking about sports, which gets at the genius of the site itself – it had great sportswriters who were invested in the way that sports exist in a larger cultural and societal framework. ‘Stick to sports’ is a myth because sports aren’t separate from the world,” Shepherd and Krotov wrote. “At its best, Grantland helped show its readers that those boundaries were imagined.”

By cutting Grantland – a “beacon in a sludge field,” according to former ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte – ESPN is ridding itself of the most insightful journalism in the organization, and, after ESPN’s announcement of the decision last week, there were more than a few people making the argument that the Worldwide Leader was taking a “less thinking, more screaming” approach to its content. With the numerous talking heads and “hot take” shows ESPN has in its lineup, you certainly wouldn’t be wrong to get that impression.

The more rational – and perhaps factual – reason for Grantland’s demise simply came down to business. The site didn’t generate a ton of revenue. ESPN had to make cuts, and shuttering Grantland was a savvy business decision. I get that, but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

The most frustrating aspect of Grantland’s end is simply that it’s another example of a network prioritizing ratings and revenue over content and serious thinking. After all, ESPN’s decision comes in the same week as CNBC’s Republican debate, a debate that was pilloried for the moderators’ ineptitude and insistence on pitting the candidates against one another instead of taking a more cerebral approach to questions of policy and governance.

I suppose I’m not surprised that networks, like any other business, will prioritize the bottom line over anything else, but I’d rather not be that cynical. Now that Grantland is gone, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Worldwide Leader is Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith shouting less than lucid arguments at one another. I don’t want that to be the future for media, but that looks like it’s where the industry is heading.

That scares me, that angers me, but, most of all, it just makes me sad. I’m going to miss Grantland.

Jacob Sevening can be reached at seve8586@stthomas.edu.