So, I began SAINTERNET as a way to help out-of-town fans keep up-to-date with the goings-on of the Saints. Before traditional news sources began arriving online, displaced fans lacked access to very basic info, such as player transactions and the team's schedule. My status as a student at UT-Austin afforded me access to a number of useful information sources, such as the clari.* newsgroups and the LEXIS-NEXIS database.

To an extent, in the early days my role was simply one of infomediary, relaying breaking news from sources that had quality information but limited distribution. Being a middleman wasn't completely satisfying, though; I strove to add value to the info by distilling it, putting it in context, and editorializing (in any event, intellectual property considerations forbade relaying the news via simple cut-and-paste).

Ultimately, the traditional sources started arriving online- nfl.com gave the official story; such local newspapers as the Biloxi Sun Herald and the Baton Rouge Advocate offered on-line versions of their content. Their efforts trumped me in terms of what I'll call journalistic comparative advantage- when it came to basic reporting, a non-journalist grad student living in Austin, Texas couldn't hope to match their expertise, financial backing, and proximity to New Orleans.

I was glad that some pros had arrived on the scene- in many cases they did a better job of informing displaced Saints fans than I could've, so I exploited the power of hypertext and aggressively linked to sources of information as they came online (here's an example).

Though even today I manage to find and post items that other media sources fail to make available online (find out why Saints fans are the NFL's 25th-best and read the responses of Mora & Ditka to the NFL's rookie coach survey), I realized back then that I needed to find a new role for myself. I decided that I could be an expert in the "knowing what news the public wants" category described earlier, by concentrating on unique representations of the team's roster and on-field exploits-

• roster info
  The advent of free agency made it difficult for fans to keep up with players' comings and goings, so for every offseason since 1995 I've maintained arrivals & departures charts, which show the team's personnel balance sheet sorted by position. This info can also be gleaned from my roster / depth chart, which I've meticulously kept up-to-date for five years now. All Saints transactions are reflected within 24 hours, right down to the practice squad and reserve lists. I'm also proud of my start chart, which shows which players have been on the field for the team.
• game info
  To augment my game summaries, I recorded the play-by-play data by hand and subsequently generated such features as drive charts and yardage histograms (scroll to the bottom to see the custom stat views).