Here's a blast from the past.

Rivals.com -- the online sports network that started in Seattle in 1998, raised about $70 million in venture funding, filed for a $100 million IPO in 2000, hit the wall during the dot-com bust and then was auctioned off in a liquidation sale to a group of Tennessee investors in 2001 -- has been sold to Yahoo for a reported price of about $100 million. The New York Times has more details.

Jim Heckman, who founded the original Rivals.com in Seattle and later lost a bid to re-buy the company's assets, went on to create a competing site called Scout.com that was sold to Fox Interactive Media for about $60 million.

The rivalry between Scout.com and Rivals.com -- which both operated online niche sites to cover individual sports teams -- was always interesting to watch, with threats of lawsuits, claims of stealing publishers and other nasty accusations. I covered the dust-up in this July 2005 story, which included venture capitalist Mike Slade saying that Superman could not have saved the original Rivals.com.

What is interesting is that out of the dot-com bust and after some major restructuring, not one, but two online sports networks appear to have been sold at attractive valuations. Superman would be impressed.