Admit It! You Have a Problem!

Being a fan can consume a lot of time. Being a fan who visits message boards can take over your life. Example 1A: One Florida fanatic has posted more than 20,000 messages at one site since 2001. "That's 4,000 posts a year, 10 a day," he said. A problem? Not in his eyes. "When you break it down, it's not that much." Coaches tend to dislike them, schools monitor them and some boards have even been subpoenaed. But they can be the first to break spectacular stories, such as Mike Price's drunken escapades at a Pensacola strip club that led to his dismissal as Alabama coach less than a month later. That posting helped lift message boards from nerd to national status. Now comes this thread from seven months ago, exposing Big Red Sports/Imports for paying Oklahoma's Rhett Bomar (thanks to reader Dan). "It's not like it used to be, when everybody got up and read the sports page," Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley said. "Now everybody gets on and logs on to the Internet and either reads it or posts on it." And message boards aren't the only problem for teams. Several coaches want to pull the plug on players' blogs.