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Oh... you might regret starting this topic... especially since web/interaction design and usability is my day job (and has been for over 20 years). I'm not into rating the sites, especially since most of them are simply customizations/variations of IPS' basic offerings (Infinity Pro Sports).

I suspect you want someone to complement your team's site, you may not want to read this since I'm very UNimpressed with the current AirHog site. Here's why (in detail).

Bad Schedule Design

Let's start with the complete absence of a promotion schedule. There's NO sign of where this would be anywhere. With opening day around a month away people should be able to quickly find the nights that will have fireworks, giveaways or special visits. And NO... having to click each day is not the way to do this. Selling tickets and getting people into the ballpark is Job #1 and this should be addressed ASAP.

Speaking of the schedule, one common error found on the AirHogs' site is minimal distinctions between home and away games, worse yet the emphasis is backwards The AirHogs schedule is particularly bad since (a) the distinction is only made with the background to the time of the game and (b) the graphic artist chose gray as the background of the HOME games. The result is away games look more important than away. This can be contrasted with most other sites (like the Saints schedule) where the background for the entire day is used and the "stronger" color is use to highlight home games --something that has been part of sports schedules for only about say "a century."

And these are my #1 pet peaves about the current site. They directly affected me. (With horseraider as my witness) I compltely misread the schedule and got it backwards when planning my trip there next month. I thought the Hogs were going to be in Pensacola just after Memorial Day --not at home. Also, those like me who are interested in collectible (like bobbleheads) have way to easily see if they'll have any at all. It's clear that my best best is to look a pocket schedule so I can see the promo schedule.

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Bad News (Section, Archive, Story) Design

Moving to the news section. The news blurb graphics are simply way too big. Even on my screen at work (at 1600x1200) the graphics are too large and mean a lot of scrolling --everywhere. Anyone going to read press releases will scan them. The graphics are simply too large and slow you down. They should take a cue from other sites and/or newspapers where they're used to highlight a story and lead people to read more. Right now they completely overwhelm the blurb text and looks amateurish.

In the news section, unlike the main page, the headlines aren't links. You have to scroll past the monster-sized graphics to find the (relatively tiny) "read more..." links.

Paging through the new archive section --with only four huge stories per page-- is a real pain. If you're going to have an archive you need to show more. And did I mention scrolling?

On the story pages the graphics are still too large. For example, the QT logo on the stadium announcement, even when rescaled down to 221x178, is still too large. That logo, is well designed to be easy to pick out when small and at distance. Even as important as it is to the club, it should be about half that size. And the text could/should wrap around it instead of requiring people to scroll past it to read the real content of the page. Since the site can support a page with wrapped text around a graphic, it's not as if it's impossible to do.

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Team Roster

The roster itself is fine. The problems are mainly about what's not there now.

Will there be any photos or bios of the players? Fans who get excited by players will come to the site to find out more --and find nothing much.
Will there be player stats? Any serious following the club's play will want these. I've seen several people print out the pages from websites and take them to the ballpark since team sites are often the only place to find this. (And I should add that if the AirHogs want an automated solution to do this early every morning I already provide such software to many NoL clubs).

Right now there's no clue where they would be put. Having even a dummy page saying "coming during the season) would tell everyone that they'll find them on the site in the future.

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Tickets

This section is OK for the most part. The expected information is easy to find and follow (though the 3-D seating graphic is not so easy to follow). Of course, as with the news, it suffers from the BIG graphic syndrome. For example, the choice of photo on the current group ticket page pushes the information people came there to find well "below the fold."

There's also no online ticket purchase option. It's 2008, not 1998. Many AA clubs have ways to buy and print your own tickets. The first in a list of lost revenue opportunities.

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Stadium

This section works well, unfortunately in its current form it will be obsolete in a few months since no one will care much about construction photos after opening day.

This is the one section where the love of BIG photos is appropriate. Big photos of the ballpark construction are what fans want to see. They want a sense of how many of the little details are coming along.

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Merchandise

Uh... the online shop page is really pretty bad. The BIG photos are the only good thing about this page.

Again it's 2008, not 1996. A modern web site that has something to sell should have the ability to sell those things immediately online 24/7. Many other club sites do this (though many don't do it very well). From a business perspective, this is lost revenue. Anyone going to this page is a likely buyer. Not being able to close the deal right then and there is a mistake.

Even in it's current state it's lacking some of the most basic information to help close/complete a sale:

Prices? This page doesn't even show any prices for all the stuff.

Names/Descriptions/Colors/Sizes? If someone calls the number (and why isn't it an toll-free 800 number?) how smoothly will that order go when there are specific names of the shirt styles and similar colors?

This is one thing that can/should be fixed ASAP. It should be easy, something an intern can knock out in about an hour or two.

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Community

This section is OK, though it suffers from BIG graphics (for the Knot Hole Club).

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Employment

Uh... this is an odd thing to put on a ballclub's main nav, especially when it's only about internships. Yes some people may come to the site to find a job/internship, but this should be in an about us (or contact us) section.

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Contact Us

This page is "near perfect." All the contact information is there. What's missing? How about the office hours? --so we know (for sure) when people might answer a phone. And remove the "Contact Details for this website" from the top --it's redundant (like saying "this is a web page").

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Home Page Omissions

Scoreboard (What was the last/current game score?)
League standings (How is the club doing right now?)
Next game (Yes, I know there's a tabbed-dialog for upcoming games. It should be the selected tab, not the re-listing of the news already shown on the page.)
Webcast / Radio Info (How can I listen to a game that's going on now?)

Though it's not without its own flaws, the Saints home page does an excellent job of trying to get all the big things people come to their site. The list above (and more) can be quickly found on it.

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(In-)Valid HTML
Nitpicky, I know, but I'm a web guy and their web designers thought enough to feature it...

As a web standards evangelist I am quite glad the site tries to use them. The main page almost completely validates but contrary to the indicators it is not valid XHTML (clicking their link currently proves it; it can be done since I've done it myself, more than once using "1.0 strict:"). Of course that may be a problem with PHP not converting ampersands (i.e, "&") into the correct HTML entities (i.e., "&amp;") (--up to the point where the <iframe> comes in which is not valid in any XHTML).

This should be a table-free layout. At the very least, if you use CSS you should never need to nest tables three levels for something as trivial as content headers. If you're going to bother mentioning how you use web standards, it's best if you follow their intent not just structure. The bandwidth you save will be your fans'.

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Bottom line:

I know many of these issues will be addressed soon since every team site improves over the years. The AirHogs site isn't awful, but it's defeinitely not #1 my book in its current form. Having dealt directly with my own and several team baseball websites directly over 12 years I've done a lot of thinking and analysis on the subject. (And I'll be in GP at the QTP next month to discuss this with anyone who cares to continue this in person.)

For those who read the above and think it may be a bit excessive (which is it is for a baseball forum)... note that it provides clear criteria for how a baseball site should work. Just "looking cool" doesn't help when you can't use the schedule or get team stats. When you rate a baseball site think about what criteria you're using and that varies from person to person and from time to time.