CBS Sports College Football Game Could Alter Fantasy Landscape

The ruling has a chance to give a boost to secondary industries. Take Beau LeBlanc, for example. The New Orleans-based attorney has, for several years, compiled lists of the top high school recruits in Louisiana where Louisiana State recruits heavily. After Hurricane Katrina hit and spread the top high schoolers across the country, Mr. LeBlanc tracked many of them down, which added to his underground reputation as a Louisiana recruiting savant. (He does not have a website and has never advertised his services). With the introduction of the college fantasy football game, Mr. LeBlanc instantly becomes a source for sleepers and unknown freshmen, even if it is just to those who run into him down in the French Quarter. At the same time, a less-known site like U-sports.com, which has been running a college fantasy game for 12 seasons, could see more traffic and exposure from people hunting for a variation on a game they didn't know existed (the U-sports game, for example, offers owners the opportunity to draft a head coach). And the team of college football experts at Athlon Sports could prove to be a set of resources to complement those being offered at CBSSports. In fact, they already have a mock draft posted on their fantasy college homepage. On a larger scale, sites like Rotowire and Rotoworld will be relied on more for their college football notes and updates, which have existed even without the fantasy game for the last half-decade, if this takes off. Fans who intermittently checked in on the updates to see how their alma mater's wide receiver was healing from a sprained knee would have to compete for bandwidth with rabid fantasy players who want to know how that same wide receiver's knee is healing before he is inserted into the starting lineup. And all of this checking for updates sends shivers down the spine of Dave Plati. Mr. Plati, the sports information director at the University of Colorado, envisions a not-so-distant future where his phone relentlessly rings and his email inbox is constantly full of questions from fantasy college football owners who are seeking instant information on their players.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121751139728400789.html