Three months ago, I was dispatched to write a story for the magazine about sports coverage on the Web. This meant spending a lot of time -- more than anyone should, really -- trolling various blogs, message boards and fan sites. The goal was a separation of church and state internally -- you may have noticed we have quite an extensive Web operation here at SI, which made this whole experience rather meta -- but it was important to look at our chief rival, ESPN.com, as the site has been a big factor in bringing sports fans to the Internet.