Lehigh Football Nation

It figures that I was getting caught in a freak rainstorm last Saturday afternoon just when the first-ever conference on sports blogging started in New York City. Called with characteristic subtlety " Blogs with Balls 1.0", they managed to capture with state of "sports blogging" in one saying. (But really, did they have to add the 1.0 at the end of it to completely marry the idea to the dotcom bust? It makes it sound like sports blogging is soon going to go the way of the Rubik's Cube.) Like anything, there are outsiders that try to get the whole blogging thing, but just manage to make themselves look bad. Witness GQ's pathetic summation on their own "blog" : Part networking, part discussion, the all-day conference was a live platform for big hitters like ESPN, Real Clear Sports, and Deadspin to share their words of wisdom with newbie bloggers and argue over a few pints of Guinness about the rise of new media and which athletes are ‘roid raging...

This may sound strange to a lot of you, but when it comes to sportswriting I really don't know what I am sometimes. Am I a blogger, because I write on this blog religiously? Or am I a sportswriter, since I write for the College Sporting News ? It's something I've genuinely struggled with for years. More often than not, I try to wear both hats simultaneously. Which brings me to the now-infamous Bissinger vs. Leitch spat on Bob Costas' cable show Costas Now . To those too lazy to click on the video, the jist of the beginning is like this (fade on computer guy, opening many pages of Fox box scores and pictures of athletes behaving badly): Instant scores and constant updates... Analysis and breakdowns of thousands of scores in hundreds of cities. What sports fan could complain about that? But there's also.... this. The wild west of the internet. The "blogosphere". A virtual bulletin board where anyone can post anything. Opinions. Photos. Videos. ...