It depends on what is easy to you. Any template could have a 3 column layout. The easiest to transform will be those that already have 3 columns such as Chromatophore. If it's the exact look you're going for then Teline II from JoomlArt will match businessweek.com but I'm not sure about espn.go.com.

Thanks for your input Jamesso. It’s greatly appreciated.

By easiest, I'm referring to the template that requires the least amount of css and php work to look like the sites mentioned, most specifically www.espn.com.

I love the look of the Teline II template and have used it for a couple of projects already.  Unfortunately, I’ve found it to be infested with little bugs and conflicts which Joomlart has not yet offered any solutions to.

One other question I had was whether the 1.5 version of RT’s older templates (ie..Sporticus)lack any important core functionality when compared to the newer templates. I’m not talking about eye candy like the transparent backgrounds, but rather about updated mootools libraries and things of that nature.

Again, thanks for your input.