Long before this summers controversy over CBS Sports decision to begin including player names in its fantasy college football game, there was U-Sports.
The league manager site has been on campus for 13 years now and has managed to operate for that long under the same rules that widespread attention and criticism for its major-media competitor just this season.
With a new year of college football set to begin on Thursday, and then in full on Saturday, FSB took the opportunity to chat with Nathan Karp, director of U-Sports, which is a subsidiary of Perimeter Consulting.
U-Sports has been on the fantasy college scene for 13 years. How long have you been using player names?
We have been using player names from the beginning. We felt any other version would have been awkward for fantasy players to adopt.
How have you seen the college fantasy landscape change over the life of U-Sports?
The mid-90s was the beginning of a new chapter for fantasy sports, as league management moved online and it became easier for casual fantasy players to participate. Back then, NFL and MLB fantasy games dominated the attention of fantasy players and every year since more and more deviations of the fantasy concept have been able to take hold. While the market for college fantasy football in the 90s was very niche, it has consistently grown at a tremendous rate every year.
More recently, college fantasy sports has taken a major leap into the fantasy mainstream. There is now a competitive field of providers offering college fantasy content, analysis, blogs and podcasts. Athlon added a section to their college football preview magazines and website dedicated to college fantasy football this summer. And now obviously CBS getting in the game starts a new chapter as the awareness of college fantasy sports will reach most college football fans.
How do you respond to the issues raised by the Knight Commission and others over the use of player names in college fantasy sports?
Just like any other fantasy contest, the fantasy version of the sport increases interest and draws attention to more teams and athletes in the game. This is even more pronounced in college sports, where the top division includes 120 teams. College fantasy football provides fans with compelling reasons to watch the non-BCS contending teams on a regular basis.
What sort of action do you expect the NCAA to take on this issue, if any?
So far the comments from the NCAA have appeared to simultaneously approve and disapprove of college fantasy sports. I really couldnt predict what, if any, action they will take on college fantasy sports. The MLB-CDM case and the Supreme Courts rejection to hear an appeal would seem to be a significant obstacle for the NCAA to prevent the use of players names.
Has the attention given to CBS decision to name its players had any effect on your site?
Its too early to tell if there has been any significant impact, but I believe it is a great opportunity for U-Sports. While we have enjoyed our run of being really the only game in town, we havent been able to reach out in a broad way to increase awareness of college fantasy sports the way CBS can. Most fantasy players assumed college fantasy sports were not an option because Yahoo and ESPN didnt offer it.
While CBS, and next year surely other media-based sites, will offer a good fantasy experience for their users, U-Sports will continue to offer premium features and service and attract customers looking to have more options, much like what is offered by dozens of professional-based fantasy sites not owned by media companies. The fact that U-Sports has been successfully leading fantasy college sports for more than a decade is a great advantage to us in knowing and responding to the nuances of the college fantasy enthusiast.
Will college football continue to exist after Tim Tebow moves on to the NFL?
Tebow sure has been fun to watch and have on your fantasy team. Especially so if you happen to be a Florida alumnus. Every few years there is a college player who some leagues consider making new rules for to account for his unusual stats. Daunte Culpepper at [Central Florida] was the first one we encountered, with Mike Vick, Timmy Chang, and a few others along the way. But even with his Supermanesque fantasy numbers last year, he still is splitting top fantasy draft position in U-Sports leagues with Graham Harrell, who comes from the most fantasy-friendly offensive system at Texas Tech.

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Sarah Freligh, a former sportswriter with the Philadelphia Inquirer recently published Sort of Gone, a collection of poems centering on the career of a veteran pitcher, both on and off the field.
She took a few minutes to discuss her craft with the bookshelf in an e-mail QA:
* * *
Bookshelf: Why did you chose poetry over prose to tell your story?
Freligh: In early 1998, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I found I couldn’t write fiction to save my own life. I was nearing completion on a novel in stories as well as on eight or nine newer stories, but the prospect of immersing myself in all those words seemed impossible. At the time I was the marketing director at BOA Editions where I was reading all these wonderful poets like Kim Addonizio, Lucille Clifton, and Dorianne Laux. They were writing about the simplest things—feeding the cat on the back porch, for example—and managing to make the experience both inclusive and moving. So I started writing poetry and the early poems in Sort of Gone are what came out.
Bookshelf: Did you consider other formats, or did you always have poetry in mind?
Freligh: It was always intended to be poetry, though you could argue that some of the poems in the book are really short fictions. Also, many of the poems are written from the point of view of a limited omniscient narrator rather than the confessional “I” that drives much contemporary poetry. It’s wasn’t so much a choice as just the way it came out.
Bookshelf: When it comes to the craft of writing, do you constantly edit, go through multiple drafts, or do you find first shot is best shot? Do you agonize over every word, since there are obviously so many permutations?
Freligh: I scribble a lot in notebooks. After a while, when I’ve forgotten what I loved or hated about it, I’ll type it into the computer and then start fooling around. I love the sounds of words, the physicality of words. I fool around for a long time, but it’s not agonizing. It’s a luxury I didn’t have when I was a sportswriter writing on 15-minute deadlines. I would read what I had written the next day and be full of regrets at having to be good enough.
Bookshelf: Was the ballplayer based on an actual pitcher?
Freligh: While the character of Al Stepansky is largely fictional, some of his experiences are real—or “ripped from the headlines,” in the words of Law and Order. The poem “Minor League” is based on a real incident that I heard about secondhand. Some minor league players who lived in the apartment building next to mine had a wild party one night during which a player punched a hole in the living room wall. He was far too drunk to risk a trip to the emergency room, so he “cast his hand in masking tape,” just like the poem says. I don’t know if anyone signed it; that’s the fictional part.

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Despite major differences in revenues, the competitive balance in baseball has improved of late and is likely to tighten up even further over the next several years. This is great news for Major League Baseball. The primary reason for this sea change is that more teams are signing younger players to multi-year deals than ever before. This new philosophy should prove advantageous for smaller market franchises and less advantageous for larger market teams because lower payroll clubs will keep their best players for a longer period and organizations that have relied heavily on free agents in the past will have fewer quality choices in the future.
Since the beginning of the year, more than a dozen young stars have been signed to long-term contracts that buy out their arbitration years and one or more free-agent seasons. To wit, the Colorado Rockies made history this year when they signed shortstop Troy Tulowitzki to a six-year, $31 million deal, the biggest contract ever given to a player with less than two years' experience. The Milwaukee Brewers topped that deal by giving Ryan Braun, the 2007 NL Rookie of the Year, an eight-year deal worth $45 million. Sandwiched between those two contracts, the Tampa Bay Rays signed Evan Longoria to a six-year deal worth $17.5 million, an unprecedented agreement for a player with less than a week's experience in the big leagues.
But that's not all. Miguel Cabrera, Curtis Granderson, Justin Morneau, Hanley Ramirez, Alex Rios, and Chris Young have all signed extensions that should keep them with their current clubs for at least the next five years.
Although these contracts are not without risk, there are valid reasons why clubs and players are entering into such deals. Given the historical salary inflation of approximately 10% per year, many of these deals will turn out to be at discounted prices at the back end as long as the players stay healthy and perform as expected. The players benefit by earning more money in the early years and have the peace of mind of long-term financial security for themselves and their families. As I like to say, the first ten or twenty million dollars are much more important than the last ten or twenty million.
Participating teams, players, and fans should reap the rewards of this new trend and that should be a major positive for the long-term health and competitiveness of Major League Baseball.

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Buzzie, wherever you are right now, the world is a different place without you. Yes, you were part of the “old-guard”, but you saw so much, and lived more than anyone that I’ve ever met.
...The great thing about Buzzie was he kind of flew in the face of conventional wisdom of what an “old guy” was supposed to be like. For one, he had an email account, and checked it often (Bud Selig reportedly doesnt have a compter, but heres 92-year-old Buzzie surfing the web). And so, for the past 3 years I have been in contact with him regularly, asking him to weigh in on a variety of topics for The Biz of Baseball, as well as for Baseball Prospectus.
He answered every question I ever had of him. Well, all but one.
When I asked him to add to a compilation of comments on Barry Bonds, shortly after he was indicted, he declined.
“I prefer waiting before making a comment,” he said. “Barry could be guilty or innocent. Would be glad to make a statement at a later date.”
Sadly, that later date won’t be coming.

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David Pinto Baseball Musings



This is the second in the series of link exchanges and it should have been the first (no offense Geoff). After reading David's article on Baseball Prospectus entitled, "Evolving the Save Rule" which was written back on August 8, 2007 in his weekly spot called, "The Big Picture". Now back then, I didn't typically reply or comment on anything that I read online, but something struck me this time. Needless-to-say, David was the first person to give me blogging advice and that is what led to me writing Baseball Reflections. And I thank him for that!

Now most of you probably already know about David Pinto and his blog, Baseball Musings, but those of you who do not: What are you waiting for?! Click HERE now!

To read some of David's most recent work, check out these posts:

Gagne With a Spoon!

Danks Even More!Tacoby Rings the Bell! Tacoby Rings the Bell!

David Pinto's Baseball Prospectus archives can be found by clicking Here, but, unfortunately, he no longer writes for them.

Rather, he now writes periodically for The Sporting News Online, Here.

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Jim Reislers The Best Game Ever: Pirates vs. Yankees October 13, 1960 (Carroll and Graf $26.00) is fine baseball writing. After years of cellar dwelling, the Pittsburgh Pirates had slowly rebuilt their team during the 1950s, signing good pitchers such as Vernon Law and Bob Friend, as well as position players like Dick Groat and the great Roberto Clemente. In 1960, the Pirates put it all together and won the National League pennant. In the Series that year they faced the Yankee juggernaut, a team that included Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra. In the seven game series, the Yankees proved very dominant indeed in the games they won, beating the Pirates by scores of 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0. But the Pirates hung tough and won three games of their own, going into game seven.

Reisler weaves his account of this game around each inning with deft social history and biography of the people involved. Pittsburgh was still steel town, a working class city that at that time ranked 16th highest in US city population. (It is now 51st). The players did not belong to a union, and though they were well-paid for that time, they were certainly not rich, and most held off-season jobs. 1960 was also an election year, and both Kennedy and Nixon campaigned heavily in Pennsylvania.

The game itself was a see-saw affair, with the Pirates taking the early lead, only to lose it to the Yanks. Pittsburgh came back to lead again, only to see the Bronx Bombers tie it up in the top of the ninth, setting up Bill Mazeroskis at bat against Ralph Terry in the bottom of the ninth. As Reisler reminds us, no one who was alive in Pittsburgh on that day will ever forget where and when they heard on the radio Mazs shot over the left field wall of old Forbes Field to provide the only walk-off home run to end a seven game World Series.

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