A phone was once the fastest way for a sports fan to get their news. In the 70s, 80s and 90s a business called Sports Phone served as a fan’s lifeline for up-to-the minute sports reports.

Grantland recently ran this fascinating piece on the rise and fall of Sports Phone:

The concept couldn’t be simpler: You call a number and hear a minute-long message with the latest scores and sports news. A half hour later, if you want another update, you call again — and pay another dime. By 1979, the service was averaging about 100,000 calls per day… the company could get upward of 300,000 calls on a good college football Saturday or an NFL Sunday…

Sports Phone enjoyed an impressive run from 1972 to 2000 but was ultimately crushed by cable news and, of course, the Internet. In fact, it took us less than 30 minutes to create our own Fantasy Football Sports Phone using an RSS feed, Twilio Voice, and 31 lines of Ruby.

The gist is that we call a number and a robot voice reads us the headlines from one of RotoWorld‘s RSS feeds. Want to give it a try? Call 888.808.4929.

Here’s what the final code looks like: