There are an ever-growing number of “experts” out here in fantasyland and a new segment of ranking-the-rankers type outlets cropping up. The FF Librarian, however, is heading into her fourth season of holding the pros’ opinions against them.

Sara Holladay, the aforementioned Fantasy Football Librarian — collaborating with Donnie Campbell of TheMostCredible.com and Bill Green of FantasyDispute.com — has announced the opening of Season 4 of her Accuracy Challenge and the third to be affiliated with the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

As part of this challenge, anyone with an online fantasy football outlet and published rankings and/or projections can submit for judgment, with the results announced at the FSTA’s winter conference as well as reported via FFLibrarian.com and The New York Times‘ Fifth Down blog.

Rankings and projections are due before 8:30 p.m. Eastern Sept. 9, which is the approximate time for kickoff of the season-opening Saints-Vikings game (as if you didn’t know). Late submissions will be accepted, as long as the organizers can verify that the lists were published before the first game.

Entrants must submit rankings for their top 25 quarterbacks, 50 running backs, 50 wide receivers and 20 tight ends in Excel format. The template for projections submissions can be downloaded via the FSTA website.

Past overall winners included CBSSports.com in 2009, Fantazzle.com in 2008 and Ask the Commish in 2007, (under what appeared to be a different scoring format).

Rankings entries should go to fflibrarian@gmail.com.

Projections entries should be sent to FSTA.Accuracy.Contest@gmail.com, dc@themostcredible.com, greenbill@fantasydispute.com and fflibrarian@gmail.com.

Eddie Royal isn’t the only NFL player using social media to gather a fantasy football league.

Eagles tight end Brent Celek — a rising fantasy commodity himself — has spent the summer recruiting 11 fans to compete against him in fantasy this season.

The initial post back on July 24 makes it appear the idea just kind of cropped up rather than being the product of any particular planning. It also, however, aimed to engage his followers on Facebook and Twitter right from the start.

“I’m thinking of having u all submit videos on here explaining why i should pick u to be in my league.. any other ideas?” Celek posted.

He did follow other ideas, adding his first leaguemate the same way Royal did — the simple method of “Who can respond to this message first?” Celek did start to have a bit more fun after that, though, offering the next spot to the first person to post a photo of the subject wearing Celek’s No. 87 jersey and standing by a stop sign. The winner managed to be selected just 8 minutes later … just in case we didn’t know that the public hangs on the words of athletes/celebrities (scoffs the guy writing an article about some football player filling a fantasy league).

Spot 3 was uninspiringly awarded to another fan who posted a photo of himself in an Eagles jersey (though he at least got a bit creative).

The next two apparently went to fans who successfully bored Celek to death with videos.

Position 6 called for commenters to describe why it will be the Eagles’ year, eliciting 336 comments. The winner (Rishi Sugla) posted three different times and appeared to finally win by presenting a quick Celek biography from Wikipedia info. (Tough to say he didn’t actually win for his name, though.)

Spot 7 went to a groom wearing an Eagles vest and singing the team’s fight song at his wedding.

The eighth guy somehow failed to annoy Celek enough with his fight-song rendition to be eliminated.

And that’s where Celek’s league stands, more than three weeks after his last selection. The tight end did promise Monday night, however, to fill the remaining three slots on Tuesday. Royal, of course, went to an eBay auction to raise $810 for charity in filling his final spot.

A similar method would seem an obvious choice for Celek, who already has his own foundation. Brent Celek’s Take Flight Foundation seeks to “provide seriously ill and physically challenged children throughout Greater Philadelphia with daily support and life changing experiences,” with an admirable goal of helping 2 million children by 2013.

Celek provides yet another example of the willingness of some athletes to engage fans directly via the still relatively new social-media channels now available. The fact that he chose fantasy also shows once again the prominence of our games at the highest level of the sports scene that drives them.

No matter how silly the resulting Facebook videos or how excruciatingly long the summarizing FSB.com posts, here’s hoping we see more examples of this kind of interaction. It can be fun and rewarding for all involved.

Any time you see a list of the top 10 anything, you know that a fair bit of subjectivity went into the selections and you probably take the list with a grain of salt.

That said, you won’t find many more trusted resources for “all things Web” than Mashable.com, with its 3 million-plus unique visitors a month and more than 2 million Twitter followers. So when that site comes out with its “Top 10 Fantasy Football Sites to Help You Win,” it’s at least worth passing along.

The article doesn’t specifically say that the list represents a ranking, but the whole numbering thing seems to indicate as much. Here are the sites that Mashable’s Miranda Lin likes best, with a snippet of her comments for each …

1. Footballguys.com – “Having up-to-the-minute breaking news is the life-blood of any fantasy footballer, and Football Guys’ network of writers and inside sources is one of the best in the business, producing an “avalanche of news” that will keep you ahead of the game.”

2. RotoWorld.com – “The speed and quality of their newswire is second only to Football Guys and their ‘On Demand Draft Guide’ ($14.99) produces an easily printable document filled with player profiles and stat projections, ADP reports, rookie rankings, depth charts and injury reports that are updated in real-time and tailored to your league settings.”

3. The Huddle — “The Huddle has it all: Cheatsheets, player profiles and rankings, mock drafts, game predictions, free agent reports, start/bench advice and stat trackers. … But what really sets The Huddle apart are its forums.”

4. Fantasy Sharks — “This is the only site on this list that is 100% free — and it doesn’t give up anything in quality.”

5. FFChamps.com — “The site’s crown jewel is the FFC Performance Index, an in-season ranking and projection system that calculates which of your players will have the best outing.”

6. Football Docs — “Apparently the Football Docs’ advanced degrees in engineering have also given them an inside track on fantasy football trends, draft tactics, lineup decision-making, and player rankings and projections.”

7. CBSSports.com — “Although it’s not as organized or as user-friendly as some of the other sites, it’s hard to argue with the quality of CBS Sports’ product.”

8. Pro Football Reference — “Doug Drinen has put together a super-organized, easy-to-navigate collection of football statistics that allows users to search any aspect of a team or player’s performance throughout history.”

9. Draft Sharks — “With a sleek-looking interface that provides custom tailored cheatsheets (called MVP Boards), weekly player rankings, newsy and gossipy articles, personalized trade advice and in-season strength of season updates, Draft Sharks believes it can ‘out-analyze other websites.’”

10. ESPN.com — “In addition to the usual news and analysis from its stable of experts, including five-time Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA) award-winner Matt Berry (aka ‘The Talented Mr. Roto’), ESPN has begun to offer a variety of services across different media platforms.”

Between the surgery on his ankle and the loss of No. 1 receiver Sidney Rice for half the season, plenty of folks to pick up Brett Favre in fantasy drafts will be nervous about his 2010 outlook. Unfortunately for them, they won’t be able to buy insurance to help them rest easier.

According to this report from CNBC sports business guru Darren Rovell, FantasySportsInsurance.com is not including Favre among its list of insurable players in 2010.

“Favre is not going to be insurable this year,” said Henry Olszewski of Fantasy Sports Insurance, which is in its second year of operation. “Drafting him could be a good idea, but insuring him is not. He’s old, he’s got ailing injuries that constantly perk up, and even though he plays through them, there’s a big risk.”

Now, I’m no insurance salesman, so I’ll leave the official risk-assessment work to those folks and their actuaries (although my younger brother is one of those). From here, though, leaving Favre out of the available fantasy insurance packages seems to be a bigger risk for those trying to profit from sales.

Take a quick look at Favre’s NFL.com player profile, and you’ll see what we all already know: The guy has played a full schedule every year since 1993. He simply doesn’t miss games, despite the assorted ailments along the way that comes with being targeted for a living by angry, 290-pound dudes. (As Rovell points out, including playoffs, Favre has played in 309 consecutive games, an NFL record.)

This time last year, we all wondered whether Favre’s surgically repaired right (throwing) elbow would hold up. All he did was thrive his way through the full 16-game regular season and two playoff contests.

According to FSI policy, an insured football player must miss nine regular-season games (or combine for 14 with another covered player or 18 with two others) to draw an insurance payout. Doesn’t it make sense for the insurance seller to bet against the possibility of Favre missing nine games or more?

Obviously, the advancing age and collection of injuries along the way increased the potential risk, but it’s just that concern coupled with his transcendent prominence that would make Favre an ideal unofficial pitch man for selling fantasy insurance.

Alas, fantasy drafters will have to pick up the NFL iron man at their own risk. Frankly, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.