A roundup of recent posts from the FSB News page.

– Sure, it’s fun to run a fake team you populate with real players, but a group of British soccer fans have been doing it with the real thing.

– We’re all sports and/or stats geeks here, and Nate Silver just might be our king.

– PASPN.net got some play in The Wall Street Journal recently for its unique fantasy basketball game.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– A group of U.S. senators (as opposed to the Ottawa Senators) has sent a letter to the NFL to call for NFL Network broadcasts to be opened to a larger audience. The league plans to air a slate of games — beginning Thursday, Nov. 6 — on its own network and broadcast channels in the local markets of the teams involved. The senators want the free offering to be opened up nationally, the way the league did for last season’s Week 17 Patriots-Giants clash.

– The NBA has announced that it will begin selling the online component of its League Pass programming package as a standalone product this year. NBA League Pass offers out-of-market broadcasts to subscribers.

– Toyota and the New York City Marathon have teamed up for a fantasy game to accompany the race. If you’re of the opinion that a sport should not be derived from an activity that coaches in other sports use as punishment, then this is the only way to participate in distance running.

– An Associated Press sports writer gathered with a group of friends/colleagues to conduct a fantasy-style auction draft of the states for Tuesday’s election. To win the electoral votes for a state he or she has drafted, the participant must correctly predict which presidential candidate will carry the state.

– iTeam Sports says it is in negotiations with teams in various professional sports about offering fans the chance to buy shares in team ownership.

RotoHog CEO Kelly Perdew has confirmed that the company recently laid off somewhere “in the 20 percent range” of its staff, as previously reported right here.

Rather than a signal of financial trouble, though, Perdew told FSB.com that the decision came out of ”a few weeks of planning and figuring out what makes sense for our business.” He says that a stronger focus on the company’s business-to-business operations is what RotoHog has determined makes sense going forward.

“We were very much going down the path of two different business models,” Perdew said, referring to the split focus of delivering products to business customers as well as straight to consumers via RotoHog.com. He said that the singular focus offers the “highest likelihood of reaching profitability as soon as possible.”

The change means the company will focus more on building games and selling its technology to fantasy providers. The NBA, for example, will run two RotoHog-powered games through the league website this season. Less attention, in turn, will be paid to the company’s site, which hosts its own games. Perdew says that RotoHog will continue to deliver content through the site but will use the portal more as a technology testing ground on which to find out what works and what needs to change within its game technology.

Perdew said that there won’t be much of a focus on developing anything “overly creative” for RotoHog.com, which is why the layoffs came mostly in the area of content creation.

“It wasn’t a comment on performance,” he said.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– The current economic downturn could make it tougher for new-model, free, ad-supported sites to find the support they expected when starting up.

– Young adults, those aged 18 to 29, are watching TV less often then members of the older age groups. That could direct young-seeking advertisers to the Web more.

– SI.com’s Peter King sees the new deal the Cowboys recently gave WR Roy Williams as a bad sign for the NFL’s labor health. There has been speculation over the past year or so that the league could be in danger of a 2011 work stoppage if it doesn’t work out a new collective bargaining agreement within the next couple of seasons.

– Fantasy Sports Ventures was the fourth largest gainer percentagewise in unique visitors in September, according to comScore rankings. Unique visitors to the site increased by 48 percent over August.

– MyFantasyLeague.com is offering free midseason football leagues.

– Fanball brings the NBA fantasy draft kit to iPhone and iPod Touch users.