Sports blogs inform online community

According to the CIA, 203,824,428 people in the United States have access to the Internet. And who in their right mind would argue with the CIA? If our spies are right, that’s over two-thirds of our population.

If you extrapolate the number to the Inland Northwest, there are at least 500,000 people within this area who are part of the online community.

We want every single one of them to read our online sports blog.

Except you USC fans.

Actually, in the online community we call SportsLink (www.spokes

manreview.

com/blogs/

sportslink/), we want Trojan fans. They’re just not allowed to write any comments (as if they could).

SportsLink has been up and running for a couple of weeks, and we’ve covered subjects as varied as the Mariners’ collapse to the speed of the University of Idaho defense. What we would really like is to have you as part of not only the SportsLink community, but a participating member of our other sports blogs as well.

If you overlooked them in the past few days, you missed some interesting posts.

Last Saturday, SportsLink posted throughout the Spokane Shock’s National Conference championship game with Arkansas, putting online readers into the Arena along with 10,550 Shock fans.

We shared tidbits like this …

“The award for the best form tackle goes to Shock kicker John Koker.”

OK, that’s an exaggeration, but Koker does make a tackle on the ensuing kickoff, and the form is good – especially for a kicker.

But it was nothing like a hit by Moa Peaua, who nailed Arkansas lineman Vernon Robiskie in the third quarter’s final play. Quarterback Walter Church had been sacked, and Robiskie picked up the loose ball. But before he can move, Peaua hits him like a missile, sending Robiskie’s helmet flying.

The hit ignites another crowd explosion.

(Posted at SportsLink Aug. 19, 9:04 p.m.)

After the game, we looked into the crystal ball and tried to figure out what lay in store for the Shock, and saw a bright future.

Today we linked with other Inland Northwest newspapers concerning the Seahawks, the Cougs, the Huskies and, of course, the fightin’ M’s. We pointed you in the right direction to find our Vandal and Eagle coverage. And we also dipped into the database we like to call our son, and got an answer to a question about Sunday’s Mariners broadcast (if you’re interested, check the Doyle post).

But SportsLink shouldn’t be your only stop for sports blogs at www.spokesmanreview.com.

There’s just about as much Cougar news as you can use, like a tidbit from Glenn Kasses over the weekend about the offensive line. There is also Eastern Washington coverage, Idaho coverage, auto racing coverage and prep coverage from both sides of the border.

There are questions that ask for your comment, like Mike Vlahovich wondering what is more important for a high school football team, the linemen or the skill-position players? There are questions from you that we do our best to answer. And there are chances to question our sanity.

Each Tuesday, we’ll look back at the highlights of the past week online, and we’ll let you know some of what you are missing. But don’t wait. Just click in and start reading.

But if you run into any USC fans, don’t tell them about it.