24 years later, we're still going

It’s been 24 years.

On November 1, 2001, we flipped the switch for the first time on ProFootballTalk.com. For $500 to set up the site and $50 per month to keep the lights on, I rolled the dice on this thing. I had no idea whether it would last 24 days.

I’d stumbled into the business 17 months earlier, with the long-defunct NFLTalk.com. I read about the outlet in an article in USA Today while eating lunch at a local Subway in the early weeks of a solo law practice I’d launched on March 1, 2000. In June, I answered an open call for new (unpaid) columnists, and it went from there.

By October 2001, NFLTalk.com and its sister sites under the Sportstalk.com umbrella had gone belly up. I’d taken a six-month assignment with ESPN.com’s “Insider” service. (They didn’t ask whether I had a separa