A Sunday post in the Fifth Down blog on The New York Times’ website took a somewhat fun look at the interaction between fantasy players and a couple of prominent NFL receivers, but the third aspect could induce chills for anyone running fantasy games or contests.

The final item included by author Toni Monkovic deals with a “notorious prankster” who hacked into ESPN’s fantasy system to “have a little fun with the bugs I discovered.” Fortunately for all involved, the fantasy hackster was playing in a league with friends and had no interest in actually affecting outcome. He merely decided to use his expertise to play a trick on a leaguemate by adding Rex Grossman to the person’s roster. (In an even funnier move, he also impersonated Grossman via e-mail and sent a plea to the leaguemate for a fantasy start that week.)

ESPN ostensibly got wise to the issue and filled in the gaps but not before Deadspin caught wind of it.

The situation also brought to light another tech blogger who said he had been researching the issues with ESPN’s fantasy interface, sharing extensive details of what he had discovered. To an untrained tech eye, this seems to have been the issue: In trying to offer more customization to league managers, ESPN.com inadvertently left open loopholes that allowed for manipulation of league play.

The revelation made its way to ESPN message boards and obviously forced action by the site when administrators became aware of the issues.

The fortunate part in all of this flak for ESPN was that no one involved seemed to have any ill intentions. However, if tech-savvy folks such as these were willing to spend the time to root out such issues merely for the sake of pointing them out, one would have to imagine there are geeks out there with an eye toward manipulating a contest for monetary gain. Success in such an effort must be about the worst fear for anyone running an online contest.

At the least, the whole thing serves as a tip to game/contest providers to check up on similar aspects of their own products and services to make sure similar entry points don’t exist.

The Web has enabled the explosion of fantasy sports throughout the nation and world, but we can never forget the inherent dangers.

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

– Fantazzle is offering customizable high-stakes fantasy football leagues as part of the SUPERDRAFT event in Las Vegas. Buy-in levels range from $1,000 to $10,000, with customizable league rules and sizes (anywhere from eight to 14 teams). Each level includes at least an 85 percent payout rate to winners.

– We had former Chiefs and Jets kicker Nick Lowery on the RapidDraft.com Fantasy Lunch, our BlogTalkRadio show on Thursday. Although it was enough for us that Lowery — an obviously bright guy and now professional public speaker — was engaging and entertaining, the part that really made it worth a post here came deep into his interview. That was when the veteran of 18 NFL seasons said, “Fantasy football is the best thing that ever happened to football.”

– The Hazean is keeping polls open through Saturday to determine your favorite fantasy football team name for July. I voted for “Stafford Infection” among the 10 options, though I find the leader quite clever in its use of all four Steelers quarterbacks.

– Just like it did for baseball season, RotoWire is offering its fantasy football draft kit as an iPhone app. Among the features is a function that provides player recommendations when you check off the guys who have already been drafted by others.

– FFChamps.com has reached an agreement with Boston-based WEEI.com to offer the former’s fantasy football draft kit through the website for the popular sports talk station.

– Jene Bramel of Footballguys.com takes a turn in the NYTimes.com Fifth Down blog to tell fantasy football folks why they should be playing with individual defensive players and refutes the common arguments against doing so.

– I recently took part in one of eight “Pros vs. Joes” drafts put on by the folks at the Fantasy Football Players Championship, which pits six fantasy players against six fantasy site representatives in each league. Those who didn’t participate can pick the winners for a shot at free 2011 FFPC entries. (Find my squad here — League 5 — and keep in mind that tight ends get 1.5 points per reception and it’s an optimal-scoring format, where you don’t have to set your lineup.)

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The Fantasy Football Librarian has publicized the results of fantasy football rankings accuracy challenge she conducted in cooperation with the Fantasy Sports Trade Association for the season just completed. The surprise winner was Fantazzle.

Fantazzle is primarily a fantasy games site that just launched back in August, so to beat out a slew of more-established fantasy advice outlets is both impressive and interesting.

Is the outcome a signal that people would be best served going to that site for preseason rankings come the summer? Does it show that the ultimate accuracy of such rankings ultimately relies quite a bit on luck? Was this a strange year or a pretty average one? Do the various rankings really differ that much, or does it just take one particular differing pick to vault a site up or drop it down the list?

As the Librarian concedes in her posts, questions such as these can’t really be answered with just one year of tracking the rankings — or even two, for that matter. As the effort continues, though, we should start to see a better picture of who’s best at projecting each coming football season. Or we could find confirmation that its nothing but educated guessing.

I find it especially interesting that the fourth-place finisher here is actually a service that determines the average draft position of players from more than 1,000 online drafts by various people. Thus, the fourth-most accurate fantasy expert in 2008 was the fantasy football-playing public. In effect, this average fantasy player would have been better off following his own rankings list than that of ESPN (eighth) or Rotoworld (10th).

Whatever this exercise ends up showing us, it’s a cool undertaking that the Librarian seems serious about continuing. Congratulations to Fantazzle, and we’ll see what 2009 holds.

Top 10 overall
1. Fantazzle
2. Yahoo Sports
3. Fantasy Football Trader
4. ADP via Fantasy Football Calculator
5. FFToday
6. FantasyFootball.com
7. Fox Sports
8. ESPN
9. Ask the Commish
10. Rotoworld

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– The Fantasy Football Librarian is taking an early peek at the accuracy of fantasy football site player rankings as part of her accuracy award project (in conjunction with the FSTA). The Fifth Down blog post gets into the top early performers in the running back category, but she promises to go deeper in her regular blog.

– Esquire columnist Peter Schrager says to shut up about your fantasy teams (and other things) if you’re watching football in public. Lower in the column, Darren Rovell says the tough economy is rendering all football players virtually unmarketable and threatening to wipe out lavish Super Bowl-week parties. The horror.