What is the oldest sports blog? It sure isn't SPORTSbyBROOKS...

SPORTSbyBROOKS is one of the most popular general sports blogs out there, due in no small part to the focus on gossip articles such as "Dodger Has Pornstar Girlfriend? Sure Looks Like It " and "Video: Guy In Kendra Sex Tape Was MMA Fighter" rather than, you know, actual discussion of between-the-lines competition.

Besides drawing in the web traffic with eye-catching content that's only marginally related to sports, Brooks apparently has the ability to go back in time and change history, too...

Quoth Brooks:

Much of my 16-year main media career was spent in sports radio as a talk show host, play-by-play announcer and program director. When I created the internet’s first sports blog in May, 2001, it wasn’t called a "blog" back then and I was still working full-time in radio.

Well, that certainly surprised me, considering the fact that several sports sites were alive and kicking years before 2001. They weren't called "blogs" at the time, either, because as William Safire wrote in 2002, the word was just starting to enter the common lexicon.

My question to you, sports fans, is what independent sports sites do you recall from the dawn of the World Wide Web (as it was called back then)?

Once upon a time I wrote for a popular site called InTheCrease.com, which is no longer around but can be viewed in part via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. I'm not sure when it started, but would guess 1996 at the latest, because we had earned enough clout over time that I was credentialed by the Detroit Red Wings to cover the big Darren McCarty-Claude Lemieux brawl on March 26, 1997. ITC was a classic "by the fan, for the fan" endeavor that would certainly look familiar to blog readers today, outside of the fact that we published our articles together every two weeks as an "issue" of the site.

Out in California, PJ Swenson pioneered the "independent site earning media credentials" model with Sharkspage, which is still going strong after 12 years (meaning his hockey blog is older than some NHL franchises!).

Those are just a couple examples, of course, and in my puck-based myopia I'm not even talking about baseball, football, or general sports blogs.

So what do you say, folks? Does anyone have a guess (or better yet proof) as to what was the first sports blog?