It hasn’t garnered a whole lot of attention since the announcement that CBS would name its players this year, but a battle has been going on between the NCAA and fantasy sports since late summer. There hasn’t been much real action, but plenty of handwringing, harsh words, hyperbole and misinformation have been tossed around.

Finally, today via The Huffington Post, NCAA president Myles Brand decided to comment publicly on the issue.

In case you don’t feel like reading the entire thing, it’s actually relatively conciliatory. Brand certainly makes clear that he doesn’t agree with naming college players in fantasy games and heads down some of the bumpy roads that a number of his colleagues have driven in trying to make their points, but he stops short of predicting the end of “amateur” athletics.

A cynic might say that it’s not incredibly surprising to find a softer stance from the president of an organization in the middle of a $6 billion contract with the same company that sparked this whole controversy (a relationship Brand does fairly mention). Really, though, how many cynical journalists are out there …

Still, despite softer language and a few apparent attempts to defuse the controversy, Brand still took some missteps in arguing the NCAA’s case. For proper treatment, I figured I’d go through part of his op-ed piece Fire Joe Morgan style. (Bolded text below is copied directly from Brand’s writing.)

It’s been two weeks now since the kickoff of the college football season and the kickoff of the college football fantasy season that for the first time is using real names of student-athletes.

Sorry, sir, but player names have actually been used in online fantasy games for 13 years.

The acquisition and trading of student-athletes, the substitution of their university or college standing with fantasy team names and all for the sake only of virtual competition, runs counter to some of the most important characteristics that distinguish college from professional sports. Those who participate in college sports are students, and the first purpose of intercollegiate athletics is to enhance the educational experience of those students.

I haven’t taken the time at this point to review all the graduation rate data (or figure out how to read all of the NCAA’s charts), but I do know that the two most penalized sports under the NCAA’s new graduation-rate measuring system for the 2007-08 academic year were also the two most prominent — football and men’s basketball. Despite operating with rosters of only about 15 players, men’s basketball easily outpaced all other sports in instances of penalties.

Now, part of this is certainly the fact that more than 300 schools in Division I-A alone sport men’s basketball squads. However, if the “first purpose” is to enhance the academic experience of the players, then a whole lot of coaches and athletics directors either missed the memo or are really bad at their jobs, at least by this measure.

By the way, if you add baseball to the other two men’s sports, you get 124 penalty situations, compared with 94 among all other sports.

… college fantasy leagues pay no heed to the educational value of intercollegiate athletics as opposed to the entertainment value of professional sports.

I must say, I was quite impressed with all the heed paid to the educational value of the Tennessee-UCLA game a couple of Mondays ago. The educational value of those Tuesday and Thursday night football games is impressive as well, as is all the education provided during the Wednesday night ACC basketball games that make Dick Vitale cry all winter. The ultimate in educational value is probably that enormous group study session that pulls 65 “teams” together every March, beginning on a Tuesday night, continuing on consecutive Thursdays and Fridays and finally completing on a Monday night. How could you fantasy jerks invade this wholesome environment and wrap your entertainment-driven tentacles around everything?

College fantasy leagues conducted on a par with professional fantasy leagues supports in the minds of many that the differences between college sports and professional sports in the real world are disappearing.

You know what else is accomplishing this? A $6 billion contract to air the men’s basketball championship through 2013. A coach making $4 million a year to teach football to the “student-athletes” at Alabama. A fifth Bowl Championship Series football game that is now played a full week after the other four have completed so that it can sit alone on a Monday night. Wait, I feel like I’ve come across this idea of football on a Monday night somewhere before …

That’s the part I don’t like the most.

Give me a break, sir.

Now, Brand does seem to indicate that the NCAA has no intention of suing CBS — or any other fantasy provider — any time in the foreseeable future to remove athlete names, and he finally concedes that fantasy college football has yet to make any discernable impact on the real game. If only Brand could steer clear of the same insincere language spouted by his peers, maybe we’d be getting somewhere.

In case you missed it Sunday, Tom Brady suffered a torn left ACL when Kansas City safety Bernard Pollard’s helmet hit his knee.

Also, there’s a presidential election scheduled for some time this year.

It goes without saying that everyone involved with fantasy football has been thinking about, writing about and grieving for the loss since about 1:15 Sunday afternoon. Are we taking this a little too seriously, though.

Actually, according to CNBC’s Darren Rovell, we might not be taking it seriously enough. Rovell — working with numbers provided by Jeff Thomas, Fantasy Sports Trade Association president and founder and CEO of World Sports Technology Inc., which owns this site — reports that Sunday’s knee injury for the ages will ultimately mean a shift of $150 million in fantasy winnings this season.

That amount doesn’t even take into account the potential effect of Brady’s injury on his receivers, the team’s running backs, the defense and opponents who won’t have to worry about scoring as many points to have a chance against the Patriots.

No matter what the dollar figures end up being, no one can argue that the torn ACL suffered in Foxborough on Sunday completely altered the 2008 fantasy landscape.

Who: Dan Cypra
What: Vice President of Marketing at FantasyFanatics.com; member of FSTA board of directors

Some people actually have to work for a living. Others are Dan Cypra.

“I wouldn’t trade what I do for anything,” he says. Why would he?

In his role with Fantasy Fanatics, Cypra is charged with trying to advance the business interests of a website that specializes in fantasy sports content. When he’s not doing that, he’s generating content for and generally helping to keep up PocketFives.com (an online poker forum) and its related sites. On Saturdays, he’s working the press box and post-game media room at football games for his alma mater, Vanderbilt University. (He carries out similar duties for men’s basketball games as well.)

Fantasy sports, poker and his school’s games. For most guys, that’s a list of hobbies or pastimes, not a résumé.

Of course, it would be unfair and untrue to say that Cypra spends his time playing around. The truth seems to be quite the opposite. He is carving out a decent-sized niche for himself just a few years out of college by getting involved in a variety of things. The work ethic and knack for putting himself out there dates back to his early college days.

“I walked into the media relations department at [Vanderbilt] in 1999, when I was a freshman, … and asked if they needed help in the press box on game days,” Cypra says. “I’m still involved to this day. It’s been a great experience and something that has been extremely rewarding.”

After earning his bachelor’s degree in economics in 2002, Cypra finished up a master’s of business administration in 2003 and moved into the entertainment and tourism industry. In 2006, he was contacted by some college friends who had launched Pocket Fives and asked to come aboard to help build out the site. Cypra took charge of the marketing and media relations branches of the fledgling business, building them from scratch.

Around the same time, one of the guys who launched Pocket Fives, Cal Spears, also asked Cypra about joining the staff of Fantasy Fanatics, which launched in 2007. Now he stands as the site’s marketing director and co-owner.

“It was an opportunity to expand what I do in the sports world to a business level,” Cypra says. “Plus, there aren’t many opportunities out there that come along where you follow sports for a living. It was an opportunity that I could not pass up.”

Following the launch of Fantasy Fanatics, Cypra says he immediately looked to dive into the industry, and the opportunity presented itself for him to join the board of directors with the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. The opportunity came by way of FSTA president Jeff Thomas, who is also the owner and CEO of World Sports Technology, which owns this site.

“When it was time to call for nominations for the new FSTA board in 2007, I contacted a few people personally that were outgoing, aggressive and had skills that could transfer well to the board,” Thomas says. “Based on meeting Dan personally and talking to him on the phone several times, I knew he could be a valuable board member.”

Cypra submitted his name for consideration and was voted in from a pool of applicants. In the time since, he has played a key role in a new public relations committee that Thomas credits with improving communication both with members and the corporate world.

Of course, all this about work, marketing and business shouldn’t give the impression that fun and the job are separate. At their base, Cypra’s ventures require him to track and understand games, and the fantasy portion hasn’t decreased his passion.

From what he says, the opposite seems true: “I can’t get enough of fantasy football.”