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

– Verizon Wireless and the NFL announced a deal Tuesday that will present live football coverage to the handsets of Verizon customers for at least the next four years — including fantasy panacea the Red Zone Channel.

– Switched.com rates the MyFantasyTeams application among the best sports apps available for the Blackberry. Just what Blackberry owners need, another reason to keep staring at the thing.

– A writer for the Hollywood Reporter applied the letter of the well-known (at least around these parts) federal UIGEA law to the common practice of holding Academy Awards pools. His assessment: As long as you stick to the same types of money rules that govern fantasy-games providers, there’s enough skill involved to keep things legit.

– RotoHog has signed on to build a celebrity-based fantasy game for US Weekly magazine.

– Dave Richard of CBSSports.com uses the site’s Tableau-produced analytics to compare value across positions for the past football season.

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Just to head off any jokes before we get too far into this post, “tools” refers to Bloomberg Sports’ new fantasy baseball analytics offerings and is not FSB.com’s judgment of the participants …

We managed to overlook the announcement late last week, but in an interesting marketing twist for its fantasy package, Bloomberg has partnered with Fantasy Sports Ventures to put on the 2010 Bloomberg Challenge.

The “challenge” will be a 12-team “experts” league made up of six industry folks and six consumers. MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds (MLB Advanced Media is a business partner of Bloomberg Sports) will join five fantasy sports analysts with FSV ties:

– Ron Shandler of BaseballHQ.com

– Lawr Michaels of Mastersball.com

– Tim Heaney of KFFL.com

– Steve Gardner of USA Today

– Derek VanRiper of RotoWire.com

As for the remaining six slots, Bloomberg is accepting nominations through the end of the day Wednesday (send to BloombergChallenge@bloombergsports.com), consisting of only a brief paragraph about why you should be included. Bloomberg will select six from that group, and the draft will take place Monday night at 8:30. Those chosen will receive free access to the Bloomberg analytics.

The goal here for Bloomberg is obviously to put the value of their new tools on display by showing that they can enable the average fantasy player to compete at the highest level.

“One of the innovative elements of the Bloomberg Sports analytic tools we have developed is that they give everyone a chance to really excel and have fun in fantasy baseball like never before,” Bloomberg product head Bill Squadron said in the media release. “By matching some of the greats of fantasy baseball against six fans, we will find out how our tools can help regular fans play fantasy baseball like the professionals. We believe that the league will generate a great deal of interest and fun while also demonstrating how different the product we have created is in the marketplace.”

Most of us in the fantasy industry, of course, know that the only thing differentiating the “experts” from many fantasy players is the publishing of their opinions. For that reason, it will be interesting to see if Bloomberg gravitates toward less-experienced consumers for this showcase.

Either way, it’s a fun marketing idea and should be a particularly enjoyable opportunity for the six consumers who are chosen.

Beyond that, it’s also another indication of the seriousness with which Bloomberg is entering the fantasy sports space — which can also be read as a testament to this industry’s continuing growth potential.

Yahoo! Sports announced Monday that it has partnered with MLB Advanced Media to make its commissioner product the “official fantasy baseball game of MLB.com” for 2010.

The deal includes a bit more than one that might make a brand the official underwear of the Chik-Fil-A Bowl. The co-branding agreement positions Yahoo! 2010 baseball as the primary fantasy offering on MLB.com’s fantasy homepage. MLB’s own suite of fantasy games remains, but you won’t find (at least as of Monday afternoon) offerings from past partners such as ESPN or ProTrade.

Aside from the nice-looking “official” tag, partnering with MLB.com provides attractive traffic numbers. Although FSB.com doesn’t have specifics for each company’s subdomains, this quick snapshot of the past year shows MLB.com carrying an audience of about 5 million to 7 million in the buildup to baseball season before jumping to 12 million in April. For comparison’s sake, that represented significantly more unique users per month than (multi-sport) Web heavies ESPN.com and CBSSports.com over the same span.

Beyond the positioning on MLB.com, the partnership also brings to Yahoo! customized player highlights that users can subscribe to for the season for $9.95. The package will offer in-game and post-game highlights of players on your fantasy team and will be available for free preview to Yahoo! fantasy players for the season’s first two weeks.

“We believe this product will exceed fantasy baseball players’ growing appetites for deeper engagement by delivering an immediate, high-quality experience,” MLB.com senior VP of business development Kenny Gersh said in the release.

This marks Yahoo!’s third fantasy partnership with an American professional sporting body. Previous deals made the most-trafficked fantasy outlet the “official” provider of fantasy golf for PGA.com and fantasy hockey for NHL.com.

FSB.com has learned that KFFL and RotoExperts have reached a syndication agreement that will put RotoExperts content on KFFL for three fantasy sports: NASCAR, soccer and golf.

Fantasy racing folks can now find RotoExperts branded sections on KFFL’s NASCAR home page: Picks and Points, Nationwide Series and Race Recap. Basically, RotoExperts will be providing race preview and wrap-ups for the Sprint Cup series, along with content for the lower-division Nationwide races.

Scott Engel of RotoExperts tells us that his site will also supply KFFL with weekly previews and reviews of English Premiership socceer action and similar weekly coverage of PGA events. There is currently no set ending point for the agreement between the fantasy content sites.

KFFL and RotoExperts each reside within Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Fantasy Players Network. Along with KFFL, Yahoo!, NFL.com, SI.com and USA Today Sports Weekly also syndicate RotoExperts material.