To the legions of sports fans unhappy with ESPN’s online effort, here’s some news you may care about - John Papanek, a former top dog at Sports Illustrated in the early 1990s and the guy responsible for ESPN the Magazine, was displaced last week as editor-in-chief of ESPN.con. We heard the rumor over the weekend, and Papanek confirmed it to us Sunday. His new title will be New Media Editor-at-Large focusing on specific projects (read: the .com was hurting, and a change needed to be made).

Among the moves he’s made in the last couple years - hiring Scoop Jackson, inking Jemele Hill to a lucrative contract and watching as the formerly infallible Page 2 has crumbled.

According to this extremely flattering 2004 profile of him (does SBJ do anything besides fawn?), Papanek was a bigshot at ESPN, responsible for “integrating ESPN’s various media properties as senior vice president and editorial director of ESPN The Magazine, ESPN.com, and ESPN Emerging Media and Data” (read: apex of his career, all that).

In our humble opinion, here are three potential reasons ESPN.com has dipped in recent years as a web destination (from 2000-2005, it was our start-up page; Google has since taken over):

* Gene Wojo as the .com’s top columnist (aka ‘National Voice.’). He seems to be the guy they are trying to promote as lead columnist (Bill Simmons doesn’t count), yet we can’t seem to recall anything gripping he’s written in months, and to our knowledge, he hasn’t penned anything that’s gotten the sports world talking. [ED. HOW ABOUT …Pat Forde? Wright Thompson? Buster Olney?

* Still-struggling Page 2. It’s been on life support for months, and bloggers have been hammering its irrelevance compared to the days of Simmons, Wiley, Whitlock, and Hunter S. Thompson. It’s kind of like being disgruntled that Joe Montana and Steve Young have left the building, and wondering when management is going to do something to restore the proud legacy of the franchise. Page 2 is a brand that is hurting, like Levi’s. When was the last time you bought Levi’s? Probably the same time you checked Page 2.

* That blasted video that automatically plays as soon as you get to the page. Ok, we kid, but seriously - anyone else really perturbed by this?

We’d ask for any ideas on replacements for Papanek, but that’s a little too inside baseball. Instead - how would you alter the .com? Is a massive overhaul needed? What can be done to revive Page 2?

Rocky stint as SI’s ME didn’t KO Papanek (Sports Business Journal)