If you weren’t around the daily sports newspaper, The National (or The National Sports Daily, to be accurate), you don’t know how great - and short-lived - a product it was.

Today is the 17-year anniversary of the paper’s demise, and while it only survived 16 months, I’ve always wondered if it had just lasted a few years into the internet age, would The National have thrived, perhaps even be an online version of “Real Sports” on HBO?

Guess we’ll never know.

The National was revolutionary: Born January 31st, 1990, it was the nation’s first newspaper dedicated only to sports. It used a tabloid format, and unlike most papers, the paper utilitized USA Today’s fashion of printing most pictures in color, with a goal of at least 32 a day. It was in depth stuff, high quality, an The National attracted some of the best writers in the country, many who used the paper as a platform to bigger things. Guys like Mike Lupica, John Feinstein, Chris Mortensen, Frank DeFord, Ivan Maisel, Jay Mariotti, Tom Friend, and Dave Kindred just to name a few.

As a kid growing up, I forced Dad to stop off at Bob Evans so I could buy a copy every morning.  More on why the paper failed and a really cool video post from ‘91 after the jump.

Unfortunately, the paper’s problem was partly the content: Late scores didn’t get in the east coast (and midwest) editions because the paper used The Wall Street Journal’s parent company for distribution. Those trucks often couldn’t wait for the final on a Dodgers/Giants game (remember, Wall Street wraps up at 5 pm EST, not 1 AM). So, distribution dropped, and with a weak economy hurting ad rates, the paper shut down on this day 17 years ago.

And as a little 11-year-old, I was heart broken.

There are still some memories left on the web: This is a a great recap of times from The National, and below is an ad promo to sell the newspaper.

Yes, we have the internet now, and maybe it would’ve made the paper obselete. Still, it was good journalism at the time, which is damn hard to come by these days.