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By GREG AUMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 24, 2000
When WZTM-AM 820 dropped its all-sports format 18 months ago, Rob Weingarten found himself out of a job and enjoyed a few months during which he "did nothing and golfed a lot."
For the past year, however, he has enjoyed a job that allows him to really hit the links.
The former talk show host and program director is the chief content editor for sportspages.com, a links site many fans swear by. If a sports story is online, there's a good chance Weingarten has read it and a better chance you were sleeping when he did so.
"If a paper is posting its stories at 8 a.m., they've missed me," said Weingarten, who begins scanning newspaper sites for stories around 3 a.m. He prepares a daily collection of 75 or more links to be e-mailed to subscribers who pay $3 a month to get a comprehensive fix of sports news.
Even if you don't want to pay for the premium service, sportspages.com is the mother of all sports links sites, offering free links to newspaper sports sections across the country. Its fans include ESPN's Dan Patrick, who told a San Francisco newspaper last week that sportspages.com, not ESPN.com, is the first site he turns to each day. The main lure is convenience -- click on a city or a team and you'll find the latest stories from local papers.
The site's roots are in radio. Weingarten met chief editorial officer Rich Johnson in Seattle radio circles before coming to Tampa, and the company's CEO, Rick Scott, served as a consultant to WZTM, ultimately helping to bring Weingarten to Florida.
"He's the reason I got hired," Weingarten said. "He plucked me out of Washington and brought me here."
Weingarten's new job can make life much easier for a radio talk show host. Sportspages.com was launched about a year before Weingarten got out of radio, but it wasn't nearly the resource it is now.
"It's the single greatest tool out there," he said. "By the time many of these guys wake up now, I've done most of their prep work for (them)."
Weingarten said that scanning Internet sites for fresh topics was an "incredible hassle" when he first began to use the Web.
The 37-year-old still does TV play-by-play work for the Tampa Bay Mutiny. But one aspect of the online career that sparked his interest was that he could do the work from his Safety Harbor home.
"I'd been in radio 12 years and moved three or four times," he said. "I really didn't want to leave this area."
Not even the job's nocturnal hours are a problem for Weingarten, who often worked the graveyard shift in his radio days. And he has found the quiet, early-morning hours conducive to greater productivity.
One way sportspages.com is working to avoid a short lifespan is by staying small. Weingarten and Johnson are the only full-time employees working on the editorial side of the site, which has built a huge following despite no marketing or promotion.
"I can't wait to see where this site goes," Weingarten said. "I love it. Our audience is strictly word of mouth, so it just has infinite potential. I would end up reading all of this stuff anyway, so I just found a way to make a career out of it."
By the time this newspaper hits the driveways on his street, Weingarten will have read this story and others and picked up the link for the site. Even at 6 in the morning, a little self-promotion never hurts.
CHATWATCH: Nets guard Kendall Gill chats at 3 p.m. Monday at sportsline.com. ... Celtics star Antoine Walker, who may have to play for someone other than Rick Pitino next season, chats at 8 p.m. Wednesday on AOL (keyword: live). ... Two-time defending Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, runner-up for ESPN The Magazine's Internet Athlete of the Year, chats at 4 p.m. Thursday at chat.yahoo.com.
TID-BYTES: A black pen purportedly used by Pro Bowl tailback Edgerrin James to sign his rookie contract with the Indianapolis Colts sold for $16.50 on eBay.com last week. ... A poll at sportsline.com asked which college football team besides Oklahoma most deserved to play for a national title. Miami drew 47 percent of more than 17,000 votes, with Florida State getting 33 percent and Washington a surprising 19 percent.
-- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, send an e-mail to staff writer Greg Auman at aumanac1@aol.com.