Who gives the best sports news?

Sports: There's something for everybody.

Today I palmed through the local sports page more intently than I have in years, and I visited a professional sports team's official Web site for the first time ever.

I am not a sports fan. I do not know who won the Super Bowl and I don't know when the World Series occurs. That said, that I have absolutely no interest in batting averages or what color a team wears, I am interested in how people obtain and consume their sports-related news.

The Internet has killed certain services and changed others. As Thomas Friedman noted in "The World is Flat," how we rent movies, plan vacations and obtain stock quotes has changed with the Internet because we no longer need video renters, travel agents or stockbrokers. The question is, will the web make endangered specie out of sports journalists, too?

It is a question of economic moat. If the Gill Principle (What can be done on the web will be done on the web) is correct, then the new game is about who can best provide information, not who has it.

Official team Web sites like www.kcchiefs.com have much of the same material you'd find on any traditional sports page. They have sports commentary, results, stats, injury reports, projections… They also have stuff every Chiefs fan would love, including apparel for miniature dogs.

However, the Chief's site lacks something that the Kansas City Star's Web site does provide: a way to interface with all the buzz the provider is providing. Of course, this user-interaction is not possible in print.

In my sports-illiterate opinion, the printed page is not the future—nor the present—home of sports entertainment news. Sports, after all, are a form of spectacle. And whomever can best entertain and inform fans with whatever it is they want—from official apparel to franchise news to a place to bitch about the latest botched call—will be the winners of the sports news game.