These are the main points of my critique of ESPN.com:

    Current News- The front page of ESPN.com boasts the most recent developments in the sporting world. It keeps an up-to-date record on the biggest and most important events taking place daily. For example, on nights when the top-ranked college basketball teams are in action, in-game progress reports are typed up in conjunction with the Gamecasts that show realtime statistics and shot charts.

    Another plus in the current news area is all the video that is loaded or streamed live onto the site. When Roger Clemens testified before Congress, ESPN carried it live on both television and the Web. If you were at work you would"ve had the ability to see Clemens' testimony on The Hill (not that you shouldn't be doing work). This offers a huge opportunity for those of us who like to be the first to know things ahead of everyone else.

    Links- Linking is definitely not a problem for this site. There are links upon links that will direct you from one page to another with relative ease. For example, I can find out everything I want to know about the Tennessee-Memphis basketball game by clicking on a story link in today's "NCAA" section on the front page of the site. That link will take me to the story, but there are links within the story that connect me to the Memphis and UT team page. In addition, links at the bottom of the article will take me to other stories where Tennessee or Memphis is mentioned.

    With all these links, I can spend literally an hour reading or watching video on this one particular topic.

    Reader Participation- Another positive aspect of the ESPN.com site is the amount of reader participation that's encouraged. On the front page alone, there are places where viewers can rate a video and/or comment on the footage. At the bottom of the homepage is an ESPN Sportsnation poll. These are always on the site, and they pose a question for the fans to vote on. Later, the poll results are shown on TV and profiled in some area of the website.

    Blogging is also a part of ESPN.com. Bill Simmons is known as the "Sports Guy," while Pat Forde runs his weekly "Forde Minutes" piece. Both of these are filled with links and areas for commentary by the reader.

    The readers also like to have a voice, in most cases, and ESPN has done an exceptional job of giving them a platform to stand on.

    Negatives- The only real negative I saw in the ESPN.com site was the fact that there may be too many links. As I mentioned earlier, it's easy to get caught up reading and viewing everything related to your topic of interest. But all that information could be a little overwhelming to a novice reader. Being a sports junkie myself, it's not as distracting as it could be.

    The ESPN Insider package also is a bit of a negative. The site sometimes seems to be withholding information from the fans, but it will make that information available for a subscription fee. I don't really have a problem with this until the information that I'd have to pay for is NFL Draft or collegiate sports-related. This occasionally occurs, but not enough to get me very frustrated.

    Overall- This site is one that I would recommend to any sports fan. ESPN.com gets the best sports news out there in the shortest amount of time, and most of the time that information comes at minimal cost to the consumer.