It hasn’t seemed to garner as much attention as it probably should, but a Jan. 13 deal between AOL and Sporting News basically pushed Fanhouse aside and installed Sporting News as the sports content provider for AOL.

The actual changes are expected to take place in March, and the Fanhouse brand won’t actually disappear. It’ll be rolled into the Sporting News environment “as a destination for opinion pieces,” according to the SportsbyBrooks story.

A follow-up post on SbB dug into the staffing questions and found that nearly everyone currently involved with Fanhouse will not be sticking around with the brand. Overall, SportsbyBrooks reports that AOL will retain fewer than 10 of the 100 current Fanhouse full-timers, while Sporting News will be able to decide whether to pick up any of the writers who don’t make that cut.

Fanhouse’s sports scope extends well beyond fantasy, but fantasy sports have played a significant enough role to its efforts that the outlet was nominated in the Best New Website category for the 2008 Fantasy Sports Trade Association awards. That was the year Fanhouse re-branded (dropping the “AOL” from its name), repackaged and relaunched.

Fanhouse producer and editor Tom Herrera tells FSB.com that freelance fantasy writers aren’t expected to stick around through the transition. In a statement to us Friday, Herrera had this to say:

“There are no plans for Sporting News to retain our freelance fantasy writers, sadly. I hope other sites strongly consider taking a look at these guys’ work.

“I’m very proud of what we were able to build content-wise at Fantasy FanHouse. We went from having no original content when I came here about 3 1/2 years ago to having a stable of talented writers and formed our own in-house draft kits. Writers who started with Fantasy FanHouse also were promoted to other non-fantasy duties, including Matt Snyder as assistant college sports editor, R.J. White as NFL blogger, and Knox Bardeen blogging in various sections of FanHouse. I’d also like to thank Will Brinson, Tom Lorenzo, Paul Bourdett, Antonio D’Arcangelis, Ryan Dembinsky and Sean Lalley for their contributions over the years.”

Herrera added that, although he has options for moving to other AOL departments, he’s “definitely in the market for a new job.”

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

- Bloomberg Sports has rolled out its Decision Maker product for fantasy football folks, promising to use algorithms to compare any two players for start/sit lineup decisions. The product is $8 for the season but will be available for free to players using NFL.com.

- Tom Lorenzo of Fanhouse discusses the move of college football closer to the fantasy mainstream, with insight from CBS’ Brian Jones. (Of course, if you’ve been with us here at FSB.com long enough, you’ve been following the ascension for a while.)

- Back in late August, Fantrax chose to sponsor NASCAR Canada driver Kerry Micks to help introduce their service to Canadian fantasy players.

- WeMade Entertainment’s Fantasy Football Manager is in open beta for the 2010-2011 English Premier League season. (That’s soccer, for our mouth-breathing contingent.)

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

- This blogger, with a stated background in marketing, gives an interesting overview of the fantasy sports scene from the perspective of why it should entice brand marketers.

- Fanhouse fantasy writer R.J. White recently (OK, kinda recently) shared some of Fanhouse’s favorite fantasy baseball resources from around the Web. It’s worth noting when a site feels strongly enough about someone else’s value to direct Web visitors elsewhere.

- There are probably people who have never heard of (or don’t recall knowing) the band Pavement but know lead singer Stephen Malkmus to be a devoted fantasy player. This profile by Chuck Klosterman for GQ gives us more details of the breadth of Malkmus’ devotion, as well as the fact that he’d much rather talk about sports than his music.

- Injury-riddled NFL receiver Javon Walker: I just want to mess up everybody’s fantasy league (in 2010), wondering where he’d come from.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

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

- AOL-owned fantasy commissioner site FleaFlicker now has a free iPhone app for team management and tracking. For a full introduction, allow me to present Fanhouse’s Tom Herrera.

- With baseball season drawing ever closer, The New York Times highlighted a few iPhone apps for baseball nuts and fantasy players: FanGraphs, RotoWire’s draft kit, iScore, K-ForCE, Yahoo!’s upcoming app and MLB’s At Bat 2010.

- The League of Alternate Baseball Realities is one of the best-known and longest-running “expert” fantasy leagues. The AL-only draft took place earlier this week, and here’s what each owner thought about his team afterward.

- This Wall Street Journal story tells about how the Michael Eisner-managed Topps company is revitalizing its sports-card sales with Attax, a game that incorporates some elements of fantasy.

- Nando Di Fino of The Wall Street Journal reports that Chris Carpenter boasted the highest winning percentage among owned baseball players in CBSSports.com’s 2009 fantasy leagues: 58.6 percent of teams that included Carpenter won their leagues.

- When SportingNews.com announced the end of its fantasy-games hosting, it also told users about a deal with CBSSports.com to host leagues at half-price ($90 instead of $180). CBS has also partnered with BleacherReport.com to offer the same deal via that site.

- Gentlemen (and ladies) for some reason, Zazzle.com thinks you might be interested in this overpriced, fantasy-themed toilet paper.

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