Focus Global Community

I've been working a site that I plan to launch in the next 1 - 2 weeks. The site will be sports related, and will have a forum.

I've been looking around, and from I've seen VBulletin seems to be some of the best forum software out there. Quick, clean, spiderable out of the box, etc. I don't mind the price either. Any opinions on Vbulletin?

Does anyone have any suggestions, pros or cons for different forum software you've used?

Also, since this I have attention of a group of forum users, does the forum itself play any part in decision to participate, assuming you're interested in the topic? Would you post on a forum that was slow, awkward or otherwise "non-user-friendly" if you were interested in the topic? Or would you continue your search until you found an on topic forum that was a little more user friendly?

Any input appreciated.