Fantasy Knuckleheads has built a neat little widget that brings fantasy headlines across the fantasy sports world to any website (displayed below). The widget mixes in headlines from Fantasy Knuckleheads and from a number of smaller fantasy sports sites. Any fantasy site is able to get its RSS feed mixed into the widget if it desires. The widget is targeted mainly at sports bloggers and is easily installed via WordPress plugin or some simple HTML.

What is interesting about this is that it is a very non-traditional marketing move by a small fantasy company. Fantasy Knuckleheads realizes that getting people to read its content is its biggest struggle, so it has created a tool that will bring additional people to its site. By making inclusion within the widget available to any fantasy site, asKurt Turner of Fantasy Knuckleheads put it, “This is a win-win situation for everyone involved and will help promote each others’ content and help us all achieve our goals, more readers and page views.” Well said.

In move that will provide great promotion for the National Fantasy Football Championship (and other Fanball products), Fanball announced that it will host a daily three hour fantasy sports radio show on Sirius 125. Slotted for prime drive time coverage from 5 to 8pm EDT, Fanball’s Fantasy Drive will feature expert fantasy commentary along with interviews of past grand prize winners and others that the fantasy players would be interested in hearing from.

The show will be hosted by Fanball experts Kyle Elfrink, Ray Flowers, and Charlie Wiegert, but I would not be surprised if other Fanball writers and editors managed to get some air time. While the show will not limited to just fantasy baseball and fantasy football talk, expect those two to seasonally dominate.

This is a great move by Fanball as the radio show becomes a great vehicle for it to talk about the National Fantasy Football Championship and continue to position that game as the premiere high stakes fantasy football game. The World Championship of Fantasy Football (WCOFF) is generally recognized as the biggest competition, but ultimately, fantasy players will flock to the game that offers the biggest prize and the best competition. Fanball has already expanded the NFFC to eight cities, which is bound to help the size of its player pool.

What high stakes fantasy football league are you going to play in this year?

About nine days ago, I started a new job. The training for this job has successfully managed to fill most of my work day and a good chunk of my free time, and will continue to do so for the next month or so. This new career is something I am very passionate about it and presents a great opportunity for me and my family.

This has clearly had an impact on Fantasy Ethos as there has not been a new post in over a week. This is a clearly a transition period for the site, and I ask that you bear with me while I find a new personal equilibrium that will allow for the continued operation of the site. Having the time to write this very post is a sign that things will be returning (semi-)normalcy soon.

Sincerely,
Derrick Eckardt, Editor

The 2010 World Cup kicks off in South Africa in just over a month, but that does not mean it is too early to start scouting and preparing for the fantasy World Cup season.

The World Cup has grown in popularity in the United States in the last couple of decades, and with that growth, comes a rise in fantasy games revolving around the tournament. The most common game you will see is a the completion of a second round bracket, that is exactly likely filling out a March Madness bracket. In addition, some games will have a combined first and second bracket that is guaranteed to frustrate you when the soccer equivalent of Butler University emerges in this year’s World Cup.

Serious fantasy World Cup players will enter leagues that have them picking players to use throughout the tournament. This can be incredibly challenging since half the player pool is eliminated after three games.

Here is a mix of fantasy World Cup games that you can check out:

• World Cup Pool – This pool is dedicated to simply hosting World Cup pools. The game featured on the site covers both rounds of the tournament and teams score points based on how well fantasy players are able to predict who wins, loses, or ties. Players can compete in the site-wide contest or just a private sub-league amongst friends. Over 22,000 players have signed up to play on this site with a month still to go. Do not be surprised to see that number swell quickly the closer we get to the World Cup. The site is also available in 14 languages which makes this a truly international site for the world’s most popular event.
• ESPN Soccernet’s Bracket Predictor – This free World Cup bracket game offers a swanky prize of $5,000 to the winner. All you have to do is predict the two teams from each group to advance and then complete your bracket. In addition to competing against all entrants across the site, you have the ability to compete just against family and friends.
• McDonald’s FIFA World Cup Fantasy – The official fantasy world cup site by the organization responsible for putting on the World Cup every four years. As publication, this site has not been updated with a game for the 2010 Cup, as it hosted a fantasy game leading up to the World Cup. But, do not be surprised to something appear here in the very near future.

Those are just a few of the places that you can check out a fantasy World Cup league. Check Fantasy Ethos regularly for new fantasy World Cup news as it happens.

If you know of any other leagues, please feel to comment in the comments section.

The Sports Executives Association (SEA) has officially opened its doors and is now open for registration. What started as a Sports Industry group on LinkedIn founded by Lewis Howes with over 26,000 members, it has taken on a life of its own with the launching of the SEA.

According to the association’s site, “the SEA is a new place to learn from industry pros, advance your sports career and build a more powerful network. This is a site for sports executives looking to improve their business or place in the industry. It’s also a forum where you can share ideas and get qualified referrals from a trusted community.” In other words, it is organization for sports folk to get trusted advice and networking from other sports folk.

That original LinkedIn group has enough reach that just about every sports organization is reachable via one or two members in it. If the SEA is able to build off that strong a base, then the SEA might be able to build some real momentum.

Membership in the SEA runs at $10 a month on a month-to-month basis. That is definitely a good price point for sports executives interested in determining if the SEA will be worth investing time and money into. For that $10 a month membership fee, members will receive monthly educational seminars, the ability to network with other SEA members, Q & A with SEA advisors, and special offers for SEA members only.

If this sounds like something you might be interested, check it out at Sports Executive Association.

Major League Baseball’s Beat the Streak is one of the simpliest and successful fantasy baseball games out there. If someone eventually manages to assemble a 57-game hitting streak, they will be $3,000,000 richer, which would be the largest prize in fantasy sports history.

Beat the Streak is a very simple idea. All a fantasy player has to do is best Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak by assembling a 57-game hit streak of his own. if you can do this, then you will win $3,000,000. Easy enough, right? Well, now in its in tenth season and millions of attempts later, assembling a fantasy hitting streak appears to be just as difficult as doing it in real life.

I cannot talk say enough about the true beauty that this game. It is a concept that takes about two minutes to grasp and about five minutes to play. Too many fantasy games get away from this basic concept, so it is always nice to get back to basics.

Some quick back of the envelope indicate that the odds of being able to assemble a 57-game hitting streak are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 529 million. That is assuming that selected player that night is hitting in the neighborhood of 0.333 and has three at-bats that night. I left off a fourth plate appearance to account for walks, hit batters, and other reasons why the batter may only have three at-bats (if you assume the fourth at-bat, the odds drop to 1 in 269 million). In other words, your odds of hitting it big are better suited for tonight’s Mega Millions drawing which has a $266 Million jackpot and has odds of only 1 in 175 million. (Although, Beat the Streak is free, it has infinitely high expected value).

With huge fantasy ramification overseas and potentially even in the United States, Britain’s High Court ruled that the schedules of the English Premier League are copyrighted materials and should be protected as such. The court ruled that since making the schedules was a very complicated activity that schedule makers should have the results of their laboring protected under British copyright law. The lawsuit was brought by the EPL against a subsidiary of Yahoo!, which printed the schedules without licensing the information from the EPL.

Fantasy English Premier League is one of the largest fantasy markets outside of the United States and is the most popular in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom. While it remains to be seen how this will be enforced in Britain, and if possible, in the United States, this should definitely be something of which anyone operating or playing in an EPL game should take note.

Hopefully, this is does not give the professional leagues in the United States a new angle to use to force fantasy leagues to license their games. After Major League Baseball lost its lawsuit against CDM Sports in 2007, the fantasy industry has been operating under the notion that fantasy leagues and the use of real statistics did not have to be licensed. However, the schedule argument could be a back door to bring the licensing issue back up. Imagine not being able to determine your starting lineup because your fantasy league service did not have the the upcoming schedules. Fantasy sites would be forced to pay the licensing fee (assuming they could get a license) to the leagues to include this small, but vital piece of information.

What are your thoughts on the ruling and potential ramifications?

We go back to our bookshelves for this week’s Fantasy Book Review here on Fantasy Ethos. I am happy to announce that today’s review is the second edition of the Your Comprehensive Guide to Playing Fantasy Football by Sam Hendricks.

There is something intriguing about getting fantasy football advice from a guy who flew and trained other pilots on flying the F-15. In the Fantasy Football Guidebook, Sam Hendricks opens his vast knowledge of playing fantasy football to the masses. Hendrick’s tome on fantasy football is a massive 375 pages that takes players from high-level topics to nitty-gritty details.

Knowing Hendricks’ background as a pilot helps put the massiveness of this book into perspective–Hendricks prepares the fantasy player for every conceivable and inconceivable case a fantasy player may encounter. Treating the reader as if he is responsbile for guaranteeing the well being of a $30 million fighter jet, Hendricks gets fantasy football players accustomed to the numerous scenarios that may play out in a league and advises him on how to navigate through them to their league titles.

In the Fantasy Football Guidebook, Hendricks spends countless pages discussing various draft strategies, auction strategies, position-by-position strategies, and league set-ups. However, the real gold in this book is the cerebral aspect of the book. Hendricks gets into the mind of fantasy players and discusses on how you can use one drafter’s tendencies to your advantage and how to handle the psychological game that fantasy football is. The Fantasy Football Guidebook is a great book to learn to take a much more strategic and disciplined approached to fantasy football.

The Fantasy Football Guidebook is a must read for any fantasy player looking to compete in the World Championship of Fantasy Football (WCOFF) as Hendricks has dedicated ten pages on preparing for this one particular high stakes league. He goes into special strategies for this draft on what to expect and how to vary your play accordingly.

Overall, if you read this book and do not consider yourself a better fantasy football player after reading it, read it again, you clearly were not paying attention.

You may purchase Fantasy Football Guidebook: Your Comprehensive Guide to Playing Fantasy Football (2nd Edition) at Amazon. , via our affiliate link (which helps fund this site).

What are your thoughts about the Fantasy Football Guidebook?

Just when I thought just about every possible combination of fantasy games had been invented, Roster Slots comes along and has a unique take on fantasy sports. The innovation in Roster Slots is that instead of you drafting your fantasy baseball team yourself, you spin the Roster Slot machine for your player. If you don’t like the players that come up, spin again. However, you only have a limited number of spins, so there is a little bit of strategy involved. Do you lock in a mediocre middle infield to give you more shots at an awesome outfield? The scoring system is pretty standard, although simplified.

What is interesting about Roster Slots is that while it is a new format for drafting and playing fantasy sports, slot machines are so ubiquitous that most people will understand how to play pretty quickly, and Roster Slots will not have to do as much education as most new fantasy sports games tend to have to do.

Currently, Roster Slots is a free game with daily, weekly, average-per-play, and yearly leagues fantasy players can play, so you can spend five minutes on it a day, or five minutes once a week if you so choose. Roster Slots is the kind of fantasy game you would play if you had the itch to field another fantasy team and did not want to spend too much money or go through an entire draft. It makes for a fun little diversion.

In terms of sign-up, Roster Slots has done something very simple and allow players to sign up using their Google, Facebook, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, or OpenID account. In other words, everyone should be able to play without having to create a new account, which is often a barrier that stops many people from signing up for new products. While this is common across much of the internet, easy sign-ups like this have not really seeped into the fantasy sports market.

My one complaint about the site is the fact that I had to sign up to play around with the slot machine. I think from a marketing perspective, if I could play around with the slot machine prior to signing up, it would give players a better feel for the game.

If you check out the site, you may want to check out the expert league in which I will be competing. I rarely consider myself a fantasy expert, but I am definitely capable of pulling a lever a few times.

CBSSports.com has put out a list of the 200 most popular fantasy baseball team names for the 2010 fantasy baseball season. The winner this year is Evil Empire. Movie references always make for great names, as evidenced by the fact that Chico’s Bail Bonds and the Bad News Bears both cracked the top 15, while a number of other references were spread throughout the top 200.

Surprisingly, a current news or scandal reference really did not crack the list. How did Tiger Woods themed names not even crack the top 200? There are plenty of BALCO Bombers and HGH themed teams, but no Tiger’s Harem or Elin’s Revenge? I find this omission remarkable. Or, maybe fantasy baseball players don’t care about Tiger?

CBSSports.com compiled this list by sampling the approximate 1,000,000 teams currently hosted on its fantasy baseball commissioner.

My biggest complaint about this list is not with the list, but how unoriginal can some people be? The number six team on the list is the Yankees or New York Yankees? Really, that’s the best someone can do? Short of trying to piss of a Red Sox fan in your league, that just lacks any creativity. I would call on league members to vote these members out of their league.

If you want a chuckle, take a look at the complete list of 200 names.