>I was saying that I like the general idea, themes, and
>possibilities with what you put up. I clicked around a bit to
>all teh different pages, but its hard for me to really focus
>on that right now since I'm still trying to figure out the
>content and organization of everything else..

I know it was a bare bones mock up but it's really just scratching the surface. I hear you about everything else though, this does take a bit of planning before the site phase takes hold.

>One thing I was thinking is :Im not sure I want sites off
>sites. My initial line of thought is I want everything in one
>place, of course that could become extremely confusing and
>cluttered but I'm still back and forth on the idea of
>spreading people out too thin.

There are pros and cons to both approaches- but within the network arrangement, there are ways. I have one theme that allows for the creation of mini-sites within that one theme that doesn't require the network feature. All in all, having the option available is always good IMO. Initially, having everything located in the same main site is obviously ideal, but with growth, the option to network sub-sites is invaluable. I think it's clearly best to start with one site full of content, but I wanted to present the 'big picture' of what *can* be done.

>In my mind (again this is just my early vision) I want a lot
>of what we do to be interconnected. This may be unrealistic
>given everyones schedule and real life commitments, but if I'm
>doing my gambling podcast or blog like bomb suggested, I want
>to be able to refer to something bomb might have said in his
>storytelling section.

Agreed. Though, I will say sub-sites would still maintain this ability. Again, it's simply a feature to illustrate the possibilities.

>I want the site to work with the different content areas, and
>not the organization of the site to have to be made around a
>particular site template.

Perfectly possible with Wordpress. Many themes are highly customizeable and widgetized to allow for fluid organization. For example, certain widgets only show up in particular posts or categories. The SEO benefits are also a huge plus- every last post can be easily SEO optimized.

Wordpress is also open source and unencrypted, so any theme can be altered to do whatever you wish, provided you've got the coding know-how. Plenty of major sites and/or their sites blogs are run on Wordpress, like Mashable, Forbes, CNN, etc.

It's not the only solution. I know I'm coming with the hard sell, but I think it's the simplest, most efficient, flexible, and cost effective approach. There's a wealth of possibilities.