It is Wednesday, and I try to cheer you up a little bit while you are at work. Today, I have something to help you relax and perhaps, stimulate your mind. You can now watch the Fantasyland movie from the comfort of your own home. Right here on Fantasy Ethos, right now. I know it is just a fancy piece of embedded code making it happen, but it is one less click for you.

Watch now, and we will discuss the movie this afternoon here on Fantasy Ethos.

Last night, I sat through one of the longest fantasy baseball drafts of my life. 18 teams, 26 players per team, 468 players later, I am still feeling pretty numb. I am fairly certain that two retired players were drafted. There might even be one dead guy selected. I’m not sure; it is all just a blur. I’m pretty sure I got splinters from scraping the bottom of the barrel. At this point, I am just thanking my lucky stars that it was not an auction draft, which easily would have doubled the time.

One guy completed the draft from a hotel in Las Vegas. Now, that is dedication. He has the world’s playground around him, and he’s drafting fantasy baseball. There is about a 99% chance he is single. Or, if he is as smart as picks indicate he is, he sent his wife to the spa during the draft.

More remarkably, I received my one and only “nice pick” when I picked up Jeff Clement in the last round. The draft undervalued catchers and I figured a second one could not hurt. But, is it really possible to find value in a round where most of the players remaining would not even draft themselves in their clubhouse league? I’ll be honest, the main reason I drafted Clement at that point was because he went to the University of Southern California, just like me.

Why do we put ourselves through this kind of self-inflicted torture? Do we selectively remember the fun first few rounds where people are having fun, and just forget about the last couple of hours which you are struck with decision paralysis while staring at the hundreds of names and numbers.

And, in case you did not catch the title reference, here is a clip to remind you:

One of the classics. If you have not seen it, watch it now.

Picklive just announced the closing of a seed round of funding from investors, including from Last.FM backer Stefan Glaenzer. Picklive is a London based start-up that is offering a mix between the nanogaming that LiveHiveSystems is offering and the daily fantasy games you can find at places like SnapDraft.

I like Picklive’s take on creating a real-time fantasy sports game. Instead of predicting the outcome of every pitch or play, in Picklive’s system you compete against other players where each player selects three players, and teams score fantasy points according to their threesome’s performance in that ten minute window. For that ten minutes, fantasy players just have to worry about their team, not every play. For a sport like soccer where the clock rolls continuously, this affords fantasy players the opportunity to play eight or nine games within just one soccer match, or just one, if they so choose.

The site was originally called Football3s, but the site changed its name to Picklive to indicate that it thinks this model can work for more than just fantasy soccer. I can easily see inning-by-inning versions of the game available for fantasy baseball and quarterly versions for fantasy football.

In-game fantasy sports is still a growing niche, and its viability and profitability is still in question. I think Picklive’s simplicity gives it an advantage, because it does not seem like as big a commitment. You only need to pick three players and then let them play. You do not have to watch every pitch or down in order to compete. It is not as big a commitment.

Living a healthy life is difficult, especially if you spend countless hours in front of computer playing and writing about fantasy football. You might have noticed that those jeans that used to be your fat jeans are now the jeans that fit you the most comfortably these days. It is official, you need to get out more. But, since you like playing fantasy sports, there is a solution that you will make it easy and you will love–Fantasy Healthball. Fantasy Healthball provides a scoring system for you to translate your healthy actions you take each week into fantasy points. Then, you can use those points to compete against an opponent that week.

The key to finding a good exercise program is something that you understand, can get comfortable with, and will stay fresh for you every week. If you are used to trying to squeeze every last point out of your fantasy football team, then this will be a very simple concept for you to grasp. There are numerous physical activities such as working out that score you points, but also simple good healthy lifestyle things like drinking enough water each day that will score you points. While weight loss is probably a likely positive side effect, you can do this just to live a healthier life.

Personally, I think the best application for this is for a group of friends to form a league and compete against each other. Staying fit now becomes a game and a contest against each other. You are now in control of how well your fantasy team does, and you can get as many points as you choose. I like to think its similar to why the Wii is so popular, because people are physically involved in how well they do. With Fantasy Healthball, it is impossible to draft a team of duds. But, most importantly, the best part, you do not have to worry about a first round pick stinking up the joint (I’m looking at your LT and Westbrook).

This is a great application of the fantasy sports model applied to something completely unrelated.

The Sprint Cup. The Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Stanley Cup. And now, the SABR Trophy. Well, maybe that was a little bit more melodramatic than it should have been, but you get my point. There is something special about a competition when you are a competing for a trophy that is almost as synonymous as the sport you compete in. Tout Wars announced a partnership with the Society of American Baseball Researchers in which the annual trophy that the Tout compete for will now be known as the SABR Trophy. The first receipts of the SABR Trophy will be the 2009 Tout Wars Champions.

Tout Wars is considered the leading fantasy baseball experts league, and I think this is a really cool thing to do. SABR is recognized as the driver for the enhanced statistical emphasis that now current in (fantasy) baseball, which has even spilled out into other sports. The relationship between these two brands and what they both stand for make this a very natural relationship; the kind that makes you wonder why didn’t anyone think of this before?

StatSheet’s founder Robbie Allen announced that he is working on the development of automated sports content at StatSheet. He plans to publish all of this information in the form of blogs.

This is definitely one of those ideas that is hard to swallow at first, but not completely crazy. Of course, if someone said that 20 years ago that hundreds of millions of people would engage in not stop writing online in the form of email, status updates, twittering, and blogging, most people would have laughed at you. But that is the world we live now. Are you going to get deep insightful witty prose that is going to make you tear up? Probably not. Could you possibly have an automated article that gives you a run down of the major events in a game, what the turning points were? Probably. How much would you actually care that a computer put that all together? Not much. Of course, if you look around at StatSheet’s network of sites and realize that was all built by one guy and a lot of automation, maybe this idea is not so pie in the sky.

The immediate response from the media is that he is trying replace sportswriters. I do not see it that way. What StatSheet is proposing is not going to replace the great sportswriters of our times. In fact, I think it will give those writers more time to write those creative and inspiring pieces that they for which they are so well revered. It will give them more time to spend talking to players and picking up rumors in the locker room. In other words, real sportswriters will be able to spend more of their time researching and creating the content that we really like. It can make sportswriting even better.

I think Allen’s goal that of 90% of the population thinking the version 1.0 content was written by a real live sports writer as a fairly high standard, but that is probably the standard that it needs to be at to succeed. I am very interested to read some of the content that comes off of StatSheet’s automated presses.

During the NFL off-season, the one thing that gets (fantasy) football fans to awaken from their slumbers is the NFL Draft. The NFL Draft means that last season is officially over, every team is now undefeated, and with the parity in the NFL, one good draft can turn a team into an instant contender. Not only do fans get really excited about the NFL Mock Draft, they spend countless hours mock drafting and even entering a few fantasy mock draft contests of their own. Here is a round-up of a few sites that you may want to check out over the next month as you wonder who your beloved Chargers plan to draft to replace LT:

• NFL Draft – Well, it is the NFL’s show, so expect a lot of coverage on the NFL’s page. If its push for its own content during fantasy football season is any indication, expect the NFL to really kick up its mock draft coverage. It is not announced yet, but do not surprised to see an NFL Mock Draft contest on its site as well.
• NFL Draft Day Insider* – from the same guys who bring you College Fantasy Football Insider, they take their college football knowledge and provide an in-depth look as to how well (or poorly, as the case may be) those players will translate into professionals and when they will be drafted.
• ESPN’s NFL Draft – Considering between now and the draft, ESPN will have about 8,000 hours of draft coverage, this probably a good site to check out. More importantly, do you tend agree with Mel Kiper Jr, or Todd McShay?
• Draft Countdown – Scott Wright offers detailed breakdowns on each player for the first three rounds, and he constantly updates his mock draft with the latest rumors and truths.
• The Football Expert – While this site covers everything football, it is the site’s NFL Draft coverage that gets it most of its attention. Site founder Michael Abromowitz continuously ranks among the most accurate NFL Mock Drafters (last year he finished #2, not too shabby!)

Any of those sites will help you get lost in a see of NFL Mock Draft goodness.

*Note: We are currently developing a new site jointly with Insider Sports Media, the owner of NFL Draft Day Insider

You can now download the introduction and first chapter of Family Fantasy Sports’ Book of Champions. This is a great example of creating content for your customers that appeals to them and knowing why they are your customers. Family Fantasy Sports is one of the most unique fantasy sports sites out there as it caters to those seeking a much more family friendly version of fantasy sports.

The nature of Family Fantasy Sports’ business is that it creates a safe online environment for families to play fantasy sports together. As part of that, it has established a very strong connection with its customers where it helps parents figure out how to engage their children with fantasy sports (and life). By publishing this Book of Champions, it has created another product to endear itself to its customers.

Family Fantasy Sports could have built some new features for its game, but that would have been a waste of time. It realizes that its users are not using the site because it is a great fantasy sports platform, but because its users are parents that are looking for a way to get involved with their children.

The moral of the story: Know your audience.

I know we are in the middle of spring training right now, Joe Mauer is signing ridiculously huge contracts, and ESPN Fantasy is airing new fantasy baseball commercials, but can we just get this season started already? Fantasy football and March Madness are nice diversions, but fantasy baseball is what it is all about. It requires dedication and focus for six or seven months. Endurance like this makes running a marathon look easy. It is the Cadillac of fantasy sports. The start of the season is so close, I can almost taste.

While I impatiently wait, and you look to get your day started, here is this season’s ESPN fantasy baseball commercial to whet your appetite.

Happy Monday! Come back later for some fun content!

Sometimes, you have to go outside your own pool of resources to find something interesting. RotoExperts is hosting its Fight for Your Write! fantasy baseball article contest. Anyone is open to submit his best fantasy baseball article to the competition. The winner will have his article published plus receive a nice trove of prizes, including a copy of Major League Baseball 2K10, an Evan Longoria Fathead Jr., and a Buffalo Wild Wings hooded sweatshirt.

There are millions of fantasy baseball players out there and at least half of them think they can give better fantasy advice than most of the experts out there. That is where they are wrong. Knowing which players to recommend and writing good fantasy experts are two very different things. In to compete in this contest, not only will the winner have to make some solid fantasy advice, the article will have to be well-written, and most importantly, make convincing arguments. But, to win the contest, the article will probably actually have to be enjoyable and entertaining.

If you think you have the writing chops to win RotoExpert’s Fight of Your Write! challenge and enter. Entries are due by 5pm on April 2nd.

Good luck!