A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has announced the agenda for its upcoming winter conference, including a featured appearance from half of the husband-wife creative team behind “The League.”

– We tie our fantasy fortunes to the performances of football players, anglers, bull riders and “American Idol” contestants. Why not take a crack at predicting global performance with “fantasy geopolitics“? If there’s one thing the worldwide recession showed us, it’s that we can’t do much worse than the folks actually in charge of this stuff.

– “Sundays of Our Lives” touts itself as a fantasy football comedy soap opera for the Web. Will it be funny? Will it be stupid? Will it at least pay more attention to the football than “The League” does? We’ll see when the first episode debuts. Until then, here’s the trailer.

– Athlon acquired college fantasy games producer U-Sports earlier this year, and the combined outlet is now live with its first season of fantasy college basketball. Although U-Sports was a pay site on its own, the Athlon version of the game is free.

– Juliann Haynes checks in on the SportsJudge blog with Part 1 of her argument for why women should play, or at least support their significant others in playing, fantasy sports.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page:

– Athlon has “officially” kicked off it’s 2009 college football coverage, including the first year of its incorporation of U-Sports.

– Brian Moore, owner of FootballHangout.com is looking to sell his site.

– RotoWire’s Chris Liss presents the rules for proper etiquette in the fantasy trade market: (1) Make an offer. Don’t ask, “What do you want for … ?” (2) Respond in a timely fashion to reasonable offers. (3) Don’t try to rob the other owner. (4) Try to skip the snark when responding to ridiculous offers. (5) After a successful deal, bit your trading partner good luck. (I don’t know about you, but I and my leaguemates aren’t nearly this courteous.)

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

College football fans know Athlon Sports best for producing one of the top season-preview magazines available. The company announced a move Wednesday, though, that will position it well in the growing area of fantasy college football and keep customers more engaged throughout the season.

“We started talking about an acquisition last October,” said Nathan Karp, former director of U-Sports and now director of fantasy sports operations for Athlon. “Very quickly we realized that this relationship would be a classic win-win and negotiated terms fairly quickly.”

The move is meant to integrate the U-Sports commissioner product — which was established back in 1996 — into Athlon’s online content, adding to each outlet a component that it hadn’t previously offered.

Existing users of U-Sports will still find the familiar site at the old address, but Karp says it will soon operate under the url usports.athlonsports.com – a destination that is already active.

“The only change existing users will readily notice is an increased focus on analysis and advice,” Karp told FSB.com. “U-Sports’ strength is providing a superior fantasy commissioner service, and we purposefully never attempted to author content. Athlon Sports, on the other hand, has been covering college sports since 1967 and has always been the leader for college football analysis.”

The company also hopes that the fantasy contests will draw more consistent traffic throughout the year — or at least the specific seasons — rising to meet the spike that occurs with the open of football season.

Karp said that U-Sports will also be a key piece of Athlon’s expanded online fantasy presence, which will include the launch of a new website, AthlonFantasySports.com.

“This site will showcase Athlon’s fantasy offerings, which primarily consist of U-Sports, fantasy content at AthlonSports.com and Grogan’s Sports,” Karp said.

Although football sits at the forefront of the deal and carries a larger audience, U-Sports also brings a basketball commissioner product that Karp said will also have a presence.

“The primary focus is, of course, on college football, which has a strong potential to capture the second largest fantasy audience,” Karp said. “However, there is still an audience for college fantasy basketball and unlike football, you can argue that the college game has more popularity than the professional counterpart in basketball.”

Many of our readers might have already heard that Athlon fantasy football editor Dan Grogan suffered some significant injuries in a biking accident back on March 1, including multiple fractures to his left arm and fractures to his pelvis and lower back.

Fortunately, less than two weeks later, Grogan reports that he has already returned to work and that he’s “doing fairly well, all things considered.”

Grogan, an avid rider who has been training for several upcoming events in Colorado, says that he’ll have to alter his competitive riding schedule but anticipates being “up and about fairly soon.”

“The doctor even said I could begin riding my indoor trainer bike whenever I wanted to!” he told FSB.com, excitedly.

Grogan also says he appreciates the messages that friends — including those within the fantasy industry — have sent his way.

“I know from many of the well-wishing e-mails I’ve received that there is a genuine care about my well-being,” Grogan says.

We here at FSB.com certainly wish you well in your continued recovery, Dan.