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.

My inbox has just been flooded with copies of a landmark announcement–the Sporting News has let its players know that it will no longer provide fantasy games to its readers. In an email from the Sporting News’ President and Publisher Jeff Price, he writes:

Dear Valued Fantasy Games Player,

Due to a shift in our core business strategy, SportingNews.com will no longer offer new fantasy games going forward (excluding Strat-O-Matic). The fantasy industry is changing, and we feel it’s best to devote our resources to providing the best fantasy content and advice on the internet, and beyond. We believe SportingNews.com’s fantasy content, tools and advice are already best in class, and over the next few months, we will completely redesign the Fantasy Source section of our site to deliver a new and improved user experience. With this shift in strategy, we will dedicate our entire fantasy staff to building Fantasy Source into the number one destination for fantasy information, accessible via internet, mobile devices, and other new technologies.

…

This is huge news! During the 1990s, the Sporting News was a major source of information, and hosted its own very successful games which were powered by CDM Sports (now Fanball). In recent years, it has fallen off the fantasy radar as fantasy players have flocked to sites offering free fantasy games with lots of bells and whistles. Holding on to its fantasy business for purely nostalgic reasons just does not make good business sense. It does plan to continue producing fantasy content via the Fantasy Source.

The Sporting News has been aggressively changing its business model over the last few years as the need (or demand) for a weekly sports magazine has dissipated over the last few years. Last month the Sporting News announced that its Sporting News Today product would switch to a subscription model starting in April. The Sporting News is focusing on making sure that as the sports information industry evolves, it is ready and profitable.

Also a loser in this announcement is also RotoHog, who just last June announced that RotoHog would be providing the fantasy games for the Sporting News. RotoHog, who is fully focused on white-label games currently, will definitely miss the cachet and doors that running the Sporting News’ fantasy games might open. After all, the Sporting News is still a very recognizable and trusted brand in fantasy sports.

The winner in all of this is CBSSports.com. Later in the email Price recommends that Sporting News users looking for fantasy baseball to sign up for CBSSports.com’s fantasy baseball commissioner at a nearly 50% discount.

It is sad to seem these change in the industry. I applaud Jeff Price on being able to make a decision that was definitely not an easy decision for him to make.

Thanks to everyone who let me know about this in a very timely manner.

Remember when someone showed up to your fantasy baseball draft using a laptop? At first, you probably wrote him off as a total dork, but when he left the draft with more talent on his bench than in your starting outfield, you might have reconsidered. At this very moment, we may be at another fantasy technology paradigm shift as it is now possible to use just an iPhone to draft and manage your fantasy baseball team.

I took the liberty of looking at the available iPhone applications that would enable this not-to-distant future:

• 2010 RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit ($3.99) This is the mobile version of RotoWire’s fantasy baseball draft kit and is complete with rankings, historical stats, projections, and analysis on the names you will hear on draft day. RotoWire also has a free fantasy news application that you may want to look into.
• Fanball.com Fantasy News and Updates (Free) Another players news application from a completely different source than RotoWire uses. For hot news, I like to check to multiple sources for the latest information, so having two player news applications on your iPhone can be nothing but good for you.
• CBS Sports Mobile (Free) This application is a mini-version of the full-fledged CBS Sports site. In addition to easy up-to-the-minute player news, you can adjust your fantasy baseball roster on the fly.
• Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball (Free) Not officially released yet either, this application will allow fantasy players to manage their teams and get real-time scoring. Conceivable, you could go the entire season without ever having to use one of those antiquated laptops.
• MLB.com At Bat 2010 (TBD $14.99) The pricing for the 2010 edition has not been announced yet, but expect this year’s version to improve on an already stellar product. Just released, MLB.com At Bat 2010 will allow users to watch any game they want (subject to blackout restrictions). In addition, just like last year’s version, fantasy players can listen to audio from every game. We can only hope that the 2010 version will feature video from every MLB game. It has in fact, gotten even better!
• ESPN ScoreCenter (Free) Just think of this application of all of ESPN’s scoreboards tucked into a nice little application. You can check out in game boxscores and even watch the gamecast of a your game of interest. This is a great free alternative to MLB.com At Bat.

Between all of those application, you can prepare for your draft, adjust your rosters, and follow player news. The days of staring at laptop during your fantasy draft just may be over. And if you get an iPad when it is released, your laptop days are definitely over.

One of the things that disturbed me about putting this list was that the fantasy baseball applications worth mentioning were either by the major or mid-major players in the fantasy industry. There is definitely a business opportunity for a killer fantasy baseball application.

There may be additional application releases in the next month, so I plan to adjust this list accordingly.

Continuing this year’s trend of the big guys stepping up their fantasy baseball game, CBSSports.com has unleashed new upgrades to its games that are bound to make fantasy baseball players happy. Whether it is free leagues, premium offerings, or high stakes leagues, CBSSports.com is making a plea to attract every type of fantasy baseball player this season.

One of the big new offerings is a free fantasy baseball game. From the looks of it, it is a scaled down version of CBSSports.com’s fantasy baseball commissioner (which currently goes for $159). But, it does have the premium features like live scoring. In addition, CBSSports.com will give one lucky league champion a prize of $10,000. All you have to do is win your league and you are eligible for the grand prize. That is a nice cherry on top of anyone’s season. A free fantasy baseball offering was almost a necessity for CBSSports.com since Yahoo! and ESPN have stepped up their free fantasy baseball offerings and are focusing their attention on the free offerings.

CBS Sports Mobile has made accessing your fantasy baseball team much easier this season. The site has a much more mobile friendly version that is accessible from all mobile phones. Fantasy players should be able to make moves and check player news with ease, whether they are at home or out shopping with their wives.

One of the things that separates CBSSports.com’s premium fantasy baseball games from Yahoo! and ESPN is that it offers higher stakes leagues that go as a high as $499.99 entry with a $3500 top prize. If you are looking for a competitive fantasy league, high stakes leagues always offer a challenge.

CBSSports.com fantasy baseball products are one of the oldest around in the industry and offer a rich playing experience.

In an interesting move, it appears that CBSSports.com is abandoning fantasy golf and fantasy NASCAR for the 2010 season. I heard some rumors about this over the last month and received confirmation from a message board posting by CBSSports.com writer Ross Davenport in a discussion about CBS 2010 Fantasy Golf.

I have an email in to CBSSports.com about this development, and will update once I know more. My guess is that this was a money thing. Fantasy golf and fantasy nascar, despite the hope for these sports, just do not have the numbers to justify the costs of the games. Between statistic costs, software maintenance, marketing, and writers, running a fantasy game on a major site like CBSSports.com could easily get expensive with very little direct return to date. With everyone’s budgets tight these days, it is not surprising to see a reduction in services.

Killing these games is surprising to me for different reasons. Golf and CBS Sports have a long standing relationship, so CBSSports.com dropping fantasy golf is a pretty big indication of how futile its efforts have been in developing the fantasy golf market.

Fantasy NASCAR has had a lot of hype around it as the next big fantasy game. However, it is still exactly that– hype. That market has not quite materialized as everyone had imagined. Perhaps this is CBSSports.com deciding that the market is just not there yet, and it needs to cut bait.

Definitely an interesting development. What do you think?

In the mean time, you can check out my earlier post about where to play fantasy golf if you now find yourself in need of a new fantasy golf league.

Each year, fantasy football becomes more popular and creates additional distance between itself and fantasy baseball in terms of popularirt. When I saw this email (pictured below) in my inbox, I could not help but think it a little bit odd. MLB.com had a special sign-up offer for CBSSports.com‘s Fantasy Football commissioner product. Really?

Maybe it’s because of its existing relationship for March Madness (MLB Advanced Media powers CBSSports.com’s March Madness on Demand) that MLB.com is pimping for CBSSports.com. Perhaps, it figures that at this point, those that are going to play fantasy football are going to play it, so MLB.com might as well make some money doing it. Nonetheless, definitely not something you would expect to see.

Is this the future of fantasy? Perhaps. As a means to monetize one fantasy business, it definitely makes sense to work with other fantasy sites that have complementary products that do not interfere with each business’ core product offerings.

Earlier this week, I reported how Bleacher Report had censored an article about Bleacher Report. Last night I received an email from Dave Morrison at Bleacher Report, and he reported that the article had been re-posted. You can now find Don Fish’s article, “CBSSports.com Burns Bleacher Report Applicants For NFL Correspondents” happily posted on Bleacher Report.

Kudos to Bleacher Report for reversing course, and posting the article online. While Bleacher Report has content deals with CBSSports.com and FOX Sports, the thousands of users generating content are its most important customers, and the ones that it needs to keep happy. If Bleacher Report were to get a reputation for censoring its users whenever it did not agree with them, that would be detrimental to the site’s long-term health and viability.

Bleacher Report, which bills itself as the “Open Source Sports Network,” deleted an article “CBSSports.com Burns Bleacher Report Applicants for NFL Correspondents.” I was able to find the article on the author’s blog, “CBSSports.com Burns Bleacher Report Colts Writers.” The article mainly blasts CBSSports.com for changing the rules on a promotion it recently ran to find NFL beat writers. Since CBSSports.com syndicates Bleacher Report content, it looks the article was pulled by Bleacher Report (screenshot below) to not anger its customer.

The article cites an email from Bleacher Report CEO Dan Kelley detailing the selections that CBSSports.com made and indicated that only 16 Bleacher Report writers were selected for positions instead of the originally promised 32.

I checked the Bleacher Report Community Guidelines, and in my opinion, this article did not seem to violate any of those terms. I have requested comment from Bleacher Report as to the specific as to why the article was deleted, and I will update this article appropriately.

If Bleacher Report want to be the “Open” sports site, censoring its writers is probably not the best tactic.