From the Editor

In less than a month we took the concept of a Cardinal web site and made it happen!

During our first month, we featured extensive coverage of the NFL draft with links to other draft sites and complete write ups on Cardinal draftees and free agent rookies. Aided by our very own insiders (The Phantom and The Shadow) and Cards Corner regulars, we filled our Rumors & Innuendo page with juicy tidbits about Cardinal players, free agency rumors, The Jake Saga, Seth etc. We "scooped" the Arizona Republic by posting color photos from the team's May minicamp before the day was over.

The best is yet to come - starting with our special Training Camp issue. June has been a month which featured a paucity of information. We all want to know more about which Cardinals are "hot" and which ones are on the bubble. With the help of our "guerilla" correspondents crew and much digging, we hope to give Cardinal fans everywhere what we've been hungry for - meaningful news about our team.

A Sense of Community:
I want us to be more than just a web site. We share a fanatic love for the Cardinals, having endured the good, the bad & (mostly) the ugly and have gotten to know one another (in a web sense) pretty well. The Red Sheet should be a place to share the highs and lows of a typical NFL season - slapping cyber "hi-fives" over a big win & consoling one another after a bitter loss. Most of all I want it to be "fun."

What to Expect:
Depending on available time & resources, we'll continue to give you more bang for your buck than our bare minimum commitment. We'd like to diagram plays & formations on a Cardinal Playbook, page. and other features. We hope to develop a play-by-play log of every game (listing down/yardage, offensive formation, type of play, its outcome & key factors in its execution). If you have Netscape 3.0 or another popular browser, wouldn't it be neat to hear the Cardinal Fight Song everytime you logged on?

While our intention is to turn around each game analyses within 24 (preferably 8) hours, we may run into turnaround difficulties regarding (a) the preseason games (which aren't televised over satellite - requiring us to wait for a tape) and the (b) Felon game (because your fearless editor may be in the Valley with you all rather than writing & posting the analysis.

Some Rules of the Road:
We want you to submit input, inside info and feedback (it's our lifeblood). But (unlike Cards Corner - which does its thing well) we will not post everything you submit. I don't want you to have to scroll through 50 articles to find one interesting nugget.

I'll post stuff based on one sole criteria - Will it be interesting to our subscribers. If I think it needs rewriting for reasons of clarity, grammar or taste, I'll edit it. If it's beyond redemption, I won't publish it.

It's Supposed to Be Fun:
The "Heaven's Gate" tragedy is still fresh inmy mind as I write you. The www is taking a tremendous amount of unfair media heat as a result. But despite the fact that the Red Sheet and Heaven's Gate have nothing to do with one another, I do feel the responsiblity to suggest that we should never lose sight of the fact that football (with all its moments of beauty, spirituality, intensity and drama) is still "only a game."

Having said that, let's kick back and enjoy The Big Red Sheet. Go Big Red!

Later (GBR),

Jeff Gollin
Editor