Grids?

A site that I frequent and is actually my homepage is SportsIllustrated.com. It has a lot of good articles and keeps me updated on all the scores for that day's game. Looking at the screen shots, there is a lot going on and there are many different sections yet I know exactly where I am going depending on what I'm looking for. To me, that says there must be some kind of good grid on the site. However, looking at the site I am unable to easily identify one grid. As soon as I find one, there will be a category that overlaps what I thought was a grid gutter. Specifically, if I had to discern the sites grid, because there definitely is one, it would have to be some multiple of five. The right side of the site at least appears to me to be 2/5 of the site with the left being 3/5. But like I said, just when you identify that the SI Writers section seemingly overlaps that column.

I think what the sites grid does the best is its consistency. From day to day, I always know where I'm going to find which type of information. For the user that frequents the site, the consistency allows organization in the same way that an easily discernible grid would. What you can see though is how the different sections/categories act as modules to organize the information. This in itself creates a grid or template that I think works very well even if to the everyday user the grid is unnoticeable, which actually could be a good thing.