This site is for Fansonly

There are gimmicky Web sites and out-of-business Web sites. And then there's 9-year-old fansonly.com, a must-bookmark site for those who want to keep a close eye on college football.

The Atlanta-based company is especially friendly to those homesick for their alma mater and yearn for more than just a score on TV's running ticker. Fansonly allows users to listen to live audio broadcasts from more than 40 games every Saturday. In some cases, both schools' broadcasting teams are available, which is another nice touch for those who suffer great pain when listening to the bad guys' zealous points of view.

If that's not enough to keep the Big Man Off Campus happy, listeners also have easy access to the Fanslive Gametracker, where the current drive, individual stats and team stats are posted.

Want to eavesdrop on your coach's weekly teleconference? Fansonly offers audio from most of the major conferences. But nothing is perfect even for this informational Web site. When calling up Washington State, coach Mike Price came in loud and clear, but the tape was about preparing for the Southern California game - last season.

"The teleconference audio will definitely be on the site beginning with next week's call," said Ben Malone, FansOnly managing editor of the Pacific-10 Conference. "We don't capture that audio ourselves. We go through another company that calls in and captures the audio for us, then uploads it to our server."

Ugly games count, too

In the category of too-much-time-on-their-hands, a group from the Rocky Mountain West region has designed a fun Web site called betugly.com, with the intention of providing "recreational bettors" with information on ugly teams.

Sorry to report this Cougars and Vandals fans, but your teams have made the site's ugly-games line for two weeks. It's not all icky, however. The Big Ugly mavens list Washington State as a high flyer and predict, "Washington State has another future pro QB in (Jason) Gesser and will be competitive in all games, and will go bowling in 2001."

The two schools also were the subject of a Ugly Geography Quiz question: How many miles between Idaho and WSU campuses? Sixty-two percent of the people gave the correct answer of 8 miles.

Not always sports

Breaking away from the theme of this column, a non-sports related Web site that can be helpful during this time grief and uncertainty is called aboutourkids.org. It's presented by the New York University Child Save Center and has articles about helping kids cope with the attack.

Copyright 2001 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.