It’s been a tough year in Detroit, but it could yet end with a championship. Of course, the path runs through Cleveland.

Yes, we all know that the Lions are well out of contention for anything but eternal infamy and the No. 1 overall draft pick, and the Browns have been one of the most disappointing teams in the NFL this season. WDFN-AM’s Rob Otto, however, is representing his city in the title match of Sprint’s NFL Mobile Live Fantasy Football League against Branson Wright of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

“We decided to do this last year as a way to allow media members the ability to experience the full capabilities of NFL Mobile Live for themselves,” said Dave Mellin, public relations manager for Sprint Nextel. “The application allows our customers to manage their fantasy team from a phone, get real-time text alerts when any of the players on your fantasy team scored, get breaking news, injury reports and more.”

The league, finishing its second season, brings together some sports personalities from larger media markets around the country — and even a couple of fantasy guys. The owners that were shed by this year’s finalists include Fox Sports TV’s Andrew Siciliano (Los Angeles), former NFL kicker Al Del Greco of WJOX-AM in Tennessee, KRON-TV’s Vern Glen (San Francisco), ESPN Radio’s John Kincade (Atlanta), 790 AM’s Kevin Rogers (Miami), WLS-AM’s Roe Conn (Chicago), KRKO-AM’s Jeff “The Fish” Aaron (Seattle), KCTV’s Leif Lisec (Kansas City), Sports Grumblings’ John Georgopoulos and Jeff Thomas, founder of SportsBuff.com and FSB.com and president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

In addition to promoting the Sprint service and affording the opportunity for some bragging rights, the league awards $5,000 to its champion’s charity of choice. Otto has said that on top of the check, he would require that the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame be moved to Motown, although there’s no truth to the rumor that his charity is the Rob Otto Fund. Siciliano took home the 2007 championship.

The group went from 14 last season to a more traditional 12 this year, including the addition of Georgopoulos.

Each team still playing could have some trouble at quarterback this weekend, with Otto choosing between Philip Rivers (at Tampa) and Jake Delhomme (at N.Y. Giants), and Wright down to Matt Ryan (at Minnesota) and Ben Roethlisberger (at Tennessee), at least as of Thursday night. Each did start the weekend well, though, with Team Detroit finding 89 total yards and a touchdown in the form of Indy’s Dominic Rhodes and Team Cleveland getting 108 yards and a score from Reggie Wayne.

Sporting News’ Matthew Lutovsky — and certainly some others like him — thinks your fantasy football league places too much emphasis on the playoff weeks.

The thinking goes that it’s too long a season with too many decisions for the title to ultimately come down to a couple of weeks at the end. Instead, the big money (or bragging rights) in your league should go to the regular-season champion — the owner who put together the best record over 14 or so weeks rather than two.

This logic is right, of course … and also wrong.

Obviously, employing a two- or three-week playoff system at the end of your league’s fantasy season introduces more luck into the equation that spits out a champ. If we’re really looking to fairly reward the best team for the whole season, though, why doesn’t every league just follow a total-points format? Whichever team scores the most points over the course of the entire season is pronounced the champ.

That would really be the fair way to decide the league. After all, how much sense does it make for the team that has scored the most points to miss out on first place because he or she happened to finish with the second-highest score in the two weeks when the opponents posted the highest. How fair is it to happen to run into the team that happens to get four touchdowns from DeAngelo Williams and Donovan McNabb in the same week?

Of course, very few of us play in leagues that determine the ultimate champ by total points because it wouldn’t be as much fun. Fantasy football is driven by its head-to-head nature. It’s fun to try to battle a particular leaguemate each week. It’s fun to wind up the season with playoffs that only a few teams make. It’s not fun to carry the best record into the playoffs and then lose to the No. 4 team, but that’s part of the game.

This isn’t even exclusive to fantasy sports. If I’m not mistaken, the Patriots were far and away the best football team in the league last season except for one Sunday at the beginning of February. Should we send the Lombardi trophy off to Foxboro because of their 16-0 record?

Sure, you can argue in that in the real thing, the outcome is ultimately decided by the efforts of the players and scheming of the coaches involved. They know they’re competing for a trophy, whereas the guys scoring the points in your fantasy title game are unwitting participants. Still, you have to have built the best team for that week, however you do it, and you simply don’t get to that point on a wave of crappy management.

In the end, this game is about fun. If you want supreme fairness, move to a commune. If you want to have some fun during football season, I’ll see you in the playoffs. I’ll be the one talking myself into a championship-losing quarterback decision.