Well, that didn’t take long – ESPN debuted its NFL blog Wednesday, and within hours, at least one blog had ripped it to shreds.

We’re not quite ready to go that far, but here are a few of our observations:

* Maintaining a blog is a marathon, not a sprint, but this dude’s out of the gate heavy on the production. He’s posting in volume, that’s for sure, but let’s see how long it lasts …

* It definitely looks like ESPN has taken the cuffs off the guy, which is a good thing. He actually referenced the Brady Quinn photos, and we haven’t seen them referenced anywhere else on the .com (it would have been nice to get credit for posting them first, but hey, such is life) …

* Though we’re still relatively new to this genre, it appears as if the best way to become part of the blogging community is to link to other bloggers. It’s kind of like we’re all on this immensely gay basketball team, going around giving each other high-fives and pats on the back. We’ll be curious to see if this Mosley fellow is standing off in the corner of the gym, too cool (or wealthy) to join in with the rest of kids …

* Pro Football talk is the alpha and the omega of the football blogging community. The site skewers ESPN personalities (when necessary, and yes, camera phone photos of your dong count as ‘necessary,’ Mr. Salisbury). When they break news, will Hashmarks link to them, or wait for John Clayton to ‘learn’ the news?

* Although we like what True Hoop (NBA blog) has done at ESPN, the one beef we have is that it’s incredibly incestuous to ESPN. It feels like a commercial for the .com. It seems like every other post is about the latest from Mark Stein, Chad Ford, John Hollinger, or Bill Simmons. We get it – ESPN plucked a blogger from obscurity, and since his blog was one of many with cult/underground status, True Hoop is now trying to pry open the eyes of non-mainstream readers to ESPN. If Hashmarks starts to reference Len P and Merrill Hoge and Clayton and Salisbury, it will get old, quick …

The last question: What are Sports Illustrated, Sportsline, Yahoo, and Fox waiting for? It’s as if they’re becoming old media, and the woman who inspired us to blog says old media is going about blogging all wrong. Naturally, she’s right.

Hashmarks (ESPN)

[Update: Deadspin now has a take on Hashmarks, and as usual, it's on point.]

*If this reads like an SOS – or rather, SOB, ‘Save Our Blogs!’ – that wasn’t the intent. But since Sportsline, Yahoo, Fox, and SI aren’t going to challenge ESPN on the TV front anytime soon, the smart money would be to beef up their online content with blogs who have passionate followings, and take a huge chunk of that online money. This is no knock on Mosley, who surely brings qualifications to the table … but prior to seeing his name on the blog Wednesday, we’d never heard of him, and thus, it’s going to take some time for him to crawl up our must-read list on the NFL.