Just my two cents here, but it definitely seems that people have different opinions about what makes a good site. Some like a graphical design that makes the page look fancy, while others prefer a design that presents the information easily. I tend to prefer the latter.
When I designed the site for the league I am in, the <a href="http://nwbl.csbl.net">Virtual Springfield Baseball League</a>, I knew I could not make the nice graphics, so I decided to go the other direction and make a site that loads quickly and is viewed in many browsers equally well. As a bonus to this, the site can be modified easily, ex. I've added a polling system and a news posting program very quickly and both can be included into the site without having to change the design.