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

– This lengthy story from the Wisconsin State Journal takes a look at three fantasy sports companies based in the Madison, Wis., area — RotoWire, MyFantasyLeague.com, and FanSoft Media — with an eye toward the still-recent emergence of fantasy sports. (Unfortunately, it’s also yet another example of incorrectly crediting Daniel Okrent with inventing fantasy sports — even with the “modern” qualifier attached.)

– The FF Librarian has continued to crunch her Accuracy Challenge numbers and found Ask the Commish to be the top three-year performer in projecting fantasy tight ends.

– Fantazzle has launched a free-to-play fantasy game for the upcoming 2010 World Series of Poker, with the top prize a seat in the 2011 event.

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A roundup of posts from the FSB news page.

– Sprint and the NFL have partnered up to launch NFL Mobile Live, including football broadcasts on your phone

– American workers continue to devote a decent amount of office time to what really matters.

– FanSoft offers prizes for the best photo examples of FanDraft software at work.

– Lucky Europeans have already begun their fantasy football season.

– Jeff Pearlman hates you and your fantasy sports.

If you’re going to launch a website that seeks to compete with mainstream sports content providers as well as wildly popular social-networking sites such as Facebook, you had better know what you’re doing. There’s little worry about that when you’re a former Yahoo! executive who last headed sports, entertainment and studios before leaving the company in 2006.

That’s the background that David Katz brings to the new site SportsFanLive.com, which has launched its beta version for public use.

Katz sees shortcomings for sports fans in the currently mass-produced formats mentioned above. He told The New York Times that the major sports sites “are fundamentally all the same — imbued with traditional media DNA … and not built for the next generation and for the evolving needs of sports fans.”

As for existing social networks, Katz says that although there are sports presences, the sites don’t really reach out to fans in particular.

“Facebook and other social network sites do a good job of connecting you to people all over your life, but it’s not relevant to your sports interests,” he told the Times. “We’re isolating that subset of sports friends and giving you instant communication with them.”

Katz, who also formerly worked for CBS, touts the aggregation of information sources in his new venture. He says that Sports Fan Live will draw from about 4,500 providers, rather than the hundreds he says mainstream sports sites tap.

Although Katz decided not to run any fantasy games through the new site, the venture — if successful — could be another way for fantasy players to connect, as is the case with recent social offerings by The Fantasy Football Times and FanSoft Media. One particularly interesting tool is the FanFinder, which purports to allow users to locate other fans of specific teams so that folks might gather to watch games.

It would be easy for a startup site to get crushed in the rush to combine sports and social networking right now, but the experience, capital and positioning brought by Katz at least gives SportsFanLive.com strong initial standing.

• ON Networks announces its second season of the 5-Minute Drill online fantasy football show.
• The average primetime rating for Olympics coverage is stronger than any non-U.S.-hosted Games since 1976.
• FanSoft Media takes football notebooks online with the Cheatsheet Creator.
• Despite not having begun play yet, Women’s Professional Soccer is already planning expansion.
• The NBA is partnering with AEG to run and sell naming rights to arena in China.