THE ONLY THING THAT'D MAKE IT BETTER WOULD BE TO JUNK THE 'INSIDER' FEE: Bryan Curtis pens an appreciation of the utterly essential ESPN.com, though he does wonder -- is its blessed comprehensiveness also its curse?

ESPN.com's philosophy seems to be to hire everyone, print everything and leave it to the bewildered fan to try to make sense of it all. There's a certain glory in this, I suppose, if you like sheer volume. But as you wade through the millions of words on ESPN.com, you wonder if anyone is curating what reaches the screen.

One quibble with the piece: in hailing Bill Simmons ("to whom so many valentines have been written that even he has surely grown tired of them"), Curtis refers to him as a "a former Boston Herald writer". While technically true, that's about as relevant as calling Mick Jagger a former matriculant of the London School of Economics; neither has much to do with either's present success. Simmons ought to be recognized as one of the first bloggers (via Digital City Boston) to break through to mainstream success, and it's a shame he's not just appreciated as such.