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.”

As August quickly approaches and NFL teams arrive at training camp in rapid succession, the fantasy industry moves closer to its annual fever pitch.

No matter which fantasy sport you might prefer or target with your website, football is the indisputable king. About two-thirds of fantasy players enter the market via football, and about 90 percent of fantasy players surveyed by Dr. Kim Beason last year play football.

As we all get ready for our fantasy drafts, though, it’s worth taking a little time out to look at how we got to this point - where fantasy came from and how it became such a phenomenon.

It’s such a worthwhile sports topic, in fact, that the germination of fantasy sports served as the subject for one of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentaries back in April. Unfortunately, the film’s creators came up well short in telling the real background story on fantasy sports, as we pointed out on this site after viewing the product.

We bring it back up now, though, because the fact is that the creators didn’t simply miss part of the story, they ignored the part that made a lie of the movie broadcast by The Worldwide Leader.

It would be a bit more understandable if Lucas Jensen and Adam Kurland simply failed to realize the history of fantasy before Daniel Okrent and La Rotisserie. After all, the homepage for “Silly Little Game” reads: “For all this success, the story of the game’s inception is little known. The modern fantasy leagues can be traced back to a group of writers and academics who met at La Rotisserie Francaise in New York City to form a baseball league of their own: The Rotisserie League.”

The real story of fantasy’s birth — the one that begins in the early 1960s with a group of sports lovers and professionals from Oakland, Calif. — already lives on the Web. It would have taken nothing more than a little Googling if Kurland and Jensen didn’t know about Bill Winkenbach. The thing is, they did know.

During the months of researching and filming “Silly Little Game,” Jensen actually took a crew out to Oakland and interviewed Andy Mousalimas, a manager of one of the GOPPPL’s original eight teams, as well as some of his fellow players from the Kings X leagues that began in the late ’60s.

“The film crew not only talked to me, but they filmed and interviewed four Kings X Fantasy Football charter members, including me,” Mousalimas told FSB.com recently. “Later the film crew joined us at the Grand Oaks Restaurant where we held the 42nd Kings Draft; 2009 was my 47th year of F.F. draft. The owner of the restaurant — albeit not a sports fan — was kind to spruce up his banquet room for the draft and the filming.”

Of course, for whatever reason, none of that footage made it into the documentary, nor did any mention of the West Coast games that got this whole phenomenon started. We’ll try to find out from the folks involved why they chose to ignore the history they’d learned, but the key point is that they did.

As we’ve said here before, Okrent and his leaguemates deserve credit for helping to publicize fantasy baseball, a big step toward delivering the pastime to the masses that now play it. At the same time, if you want to feel sorry for someone for not cashing in on the fantasy boom, start at the beginning.

We’re not looking to breed sympathy here, though, we’re just looking to tell the real story. That’s what we’ll be doing at FantasySportsBusiness.com over the next few weeks leading up to the NFL season. We’ll look back to the real beginning of fantasy sports and attempt to give credit to the pioneers of the games that launched our industry.

If you have any information, people or anecdotes that you want to make sure we don’t leave out, please feel free to let us know.

A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– Apparently frustrated Android-owning fantasy football players will finally get their wish when Yahoo! introduces a team-management app for the line of smart phones in time for this season.

– Footballguys.com has partnered with FantasyFootballCalculator.com to attach its Rate My Team application to FF Calculator mock drafts.

– SportingNews.com has rolled out a redesigned site for its Fantasy Source subscription area.

– One always has to take message-board threads with at least a dash of salt, but this is an interesting discussion from the Rotoworld boards about player opinions of fantasy basketball “experts.” There are some fantasy analysts in various sports who take their words as gospel, so it’s good to get a dose from time to time of some thoughts within the target audience.

– SportsBusinessSims.com, supports and markets platforms that allow students (think college) to try their hand at making business decisions for sports entities. This promotional video leads off with the proposal of making the XFL work (if “He Hate Me” couldn’t do it, I don’t know …) and the “flagship” product centered on the Oakland Athletics.

– The SUPERDRAFT Vegas fantasy football event has announced that it will include a performance by Snoop Dogg. No word on whether the Pop Warner football coach will also drop some knowledge (or is that knizz-owledge?).

– ESPN the company will reportedly work more closely with ESPN The Magazine going forward, a move that includes moving much of the staff from New York City to Bristol.

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

This isn’t necessarily fantasy-relevant but definitely interesting.

We’re all well aware of what the U.S. men’s soccer team accomplished on Wednesday, but CBS Sports disagrees with what ESPN has claimed to achieve with the online broadcast.

The “Worldwide Leader” reportedly announced that its stream of the U.S.-Algeria match drew a record broadband audience of 1.1 million unique viewers on ESPN3.com, which is streaming the entire World Cup.

According to CBS, however, its coverage of the BYU-Florida game from Round 1 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament back in April drew about 15,000 more looks …

It’s not fantasy, but it’s interesting to note the conflicting numbers from two media big boys.

It also provides an interesting view of American sports hierarchy. This was one of the most — if not the most significant and hyped games in American soccer history, yet it was outdrawn online by a 7-10 NCAA matchup — albeit a good one.

Just something to keep in mind as you get really excited about soccer.