February 24th, 2011

FSB Daily 2/24: Sirius XM, RotoWire, Emma Bianchi, Picktainment

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

- Sirius XM has held on to hosts Ray Flowers and Kyle Elfrink of the Fanball Fantasy Drive show, which is now called Sirius XM Fantasy Drive. Flowers, the creator of BaseballGuys.com, has also joined RotoWire as a contributing writer.

- From the recent Herald-News obituary of 86-year-old Emma Bianchi of Joliet, Ill.: “When Emma died Dec. 11 at the age of 86, the family lost a diehard fantasy football player. Eleven years ago, Laureen’s then-sixth grade son started a fantasy football team and asked Emma to join it. At first, Emma didn’t quite understand the logistics and selected her players based on ‘He’s got such a nice German name,’ or ‘He works so hard for his community.’” We can only guess that she also loved David Hasselhoff.

- With the Academy Awards coming up this weekend, here’s a plug for the fantasy-style games of Picktainment, which changed its name from AwardsPicks.com with the addition of games for American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

- Steve Gardner of USA Today passes along and builds off another blogger’s pondering of whether the rise of the machines will consume fantasy sports analysis.

- You’ve probably already seen this, since it was reported by Sports Business Journal and passed along by Pro Football Talk. It’s worth noting that EA Sports will be getting a break on its rights fees for 2011 as a result of the labor strife, in exchange for a one-year extension to their deal through 2013. One has to wonder if a similar deal is available to any of the many others who pay annual rights fees.

- SI.com’s Joe Lemire recently offered an ode to Strat-O-Matic baseball for this year’s 50th anniversary.

- This agent blogger ponders the impact that Bloomberg’s foray into baseball statistical analysis — to which 17 MLB teams now subscribe — may have on player contract negotiations.

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