STATS LLC announced a deal Monday with the NFL that will make the company the exclusive provider of real-time league play-by-play, scoring data and statistics in the country.

Of course, the actual scope of any such agreement seems questionable. As far as I can tell, the summer ruling in Major League Baseball’s case against CDM — upheld by the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear an appeal — seemed to confirm that all statistics (along with names and likenesses) exist in the public domain. Following that, one would have to assume that any person watching NFL games could legally compile the stats and pass them along freely.

Nevertheless, this deal clearly deepens the relationship between STATS and the NFL and means that no other companies can deliver official numbers from the games. The “multiyear” agreement also calls for broader use of STATS-exclusive content by NFL properties, STATS-provided AP content and fantasy updates on NFL.com and leaguewide use of StatPass, STATS’ proprietary web-based statistics tool.

A roundup of posts from the FSB news page.

– Sprint and the NFL have partnered up to launch NFL Mobile Live, including football broadcasts on your phone

– American workers continue to devote a decent amount of office time to what really matters.

– FanSoft offers prizes for the best photo examples of FanDraft software at work.

– Lucky Europeans have already begun their fantasy football season.

– Jeff Pearlman hates you and your fantasy sports.

A California woman who works in sportswear sales is teaming with an admitted fantasy addict to provide a forum for venting by “fantasy widows.”

Allison Lodish and Azar McMaster have co-founded WomenAgainstFantasySports.com to cater to those abandoned and repulsed by their partners’ fantasy-sports affliction.

The site includes forums, a “Stump the Chump” section that defines some common fantasy terms, WAFS merchandise and a blog in which a “Fantasy Sports Widow Speaks.” Lodish’s initial post includes the following:

“I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I am NOT a sports hater, and in fact I am a huge fan … of REAL sports. … I feel the pain when my team loses.

“But now, I am simply a woman who has had it with the countless hours my husband spends glued to the computer checking his fantasy football crap. If he spent that much energy on ANYTHING else, we wouldn’t be here now, would we?”

WAFS looks like a fun way for wives and girlfriends of the fantasy-obsessed (not anyone I know) to counteract the lack of attention from their partners, particularly between the months of September and February. Although the founders (one of whom is male) claim that the site is gender-neutral, reaching out to anyone perturbed by the time spent on fantasy sports, the material is clearly and undeniably directed at women. With the growing number of females participating in fantasy games — although that group is still a clear minority — the site might have to further neutralize in the future to reach the largest possible audience.

In the meantime, I’m not telling my wife about it. No need to get her worked up.

If you’re going to launch a website that seeks to compete with mainstream sports content providers as well as wildly popular social-networking sites such as Facebook, you had better know what you’re doing. There’s little worry about that when you’re a former Yahoo! executive who last headed sports, entertainment and studios before leaving the company in 2006.

That’s the background that David Katz brings to the new site SportsFanLive.com, which has launched its beta version for public use.

Katz sees shortcomings for sports fans in the currently mass-produced formats mentioned above. He told The New York Times that the major sports sites “are fundamentally all the same — imbued with traditional media DNA … and not built for the next generation and for the evolving needs of sports fans.”

As for existing social networks, Katz says that although there are sports presences, the sites don’t really reach out to fans in particular.

“Facebook and other social network sites do a good job of connecting you to people all over your life, but it’s not relevant to your sports interests,” he told the Times. “We’re isolating that subset of sports friends and giving you instant communication with them.”

Katz, who also formerly worked for CBS, touts the aggregation of information sources in his new venture. He says that Sports Fan Live will draw from about 4,500 providers, rather than the hundreds he says mainstream sports sites tap.

Although Katz decided not to run any fantasy games through the new site, the venture — if successful — could be another way for fantasy players to connect, as is the case with recent social offerings by The Fantasy Football Times and FanSoft Media. One particularly interesting tool is the FanFinder, which purports to allow users to locate other fans of specific teams so that folks might gather to watch games.

It would be easy for a startup site to get crushed in the rush to combine sports and social networking right now, but the experience, capital and positioning brought by Katz at least gives SportsFanLive.com strong initial standing.