Sprint Goes Live with Media Fantasy League
Saturday, December 20th, 2008
It’s been a tough year in Detroit, but it could yet end with a championship. Of course, the path runs through Cleveland.
Yes, we all know that the Lions are well out of contention for anything but eternal infamy and the No. 1 overall draft pick, and the Browns have been one of the most disappointing teams in the NFL this season. WDFN-AM’s Rob Otto, however, is representing his city in the title match of Sprint’s NFL Mobile Live Fantasy Football League against Branson Wright of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
“We decided to do this last year as a way to allow media members the ability to experience the full capabilities of NFL Mobile Live for themselves,” said Dave Mellin, public relations manager for Sprint Nextel. “The application allows our customers to manage their fantasy team from a phone, get real-time text alerts when any of the players on your fantasy team scored, get breaking news, injury reports and more.”
The league, finishing its second season, brings together some sports personalities from larger media markets around the country — and even a couple of fantasy guys. The owners that were shed by this year’s finalists include Fox Sports TV’s Andrew Siciliano (Los Angeles), former NFL kicker Al Del Greco of WJOX-AM in Tennessee, KRON-TV’s Vern Glen (San Francisco), ESPN Radio’s John Kincade (Atlanta), 790 AM’s Kevin Rogers (Miami), WLS-AM’s Roe Conn (Chicago), KRKO-AM’s Jeff “The Fish” Aaron (Seattle), KCTV’s Leif Lisec (Kansas City), Sports Grumblings’ John Georgopoulos and Jeff Thomas, founder of SportsBuff.com and FSB.com and president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.
In addition to promoting the Sprint service and affording the opportunity for some bragging rights, the league awards $5,000 to its champion’s charity of choice. Otto has said that on top of the check, he would require that the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame be moved to Motown, although there’s no truth to the rumor that his charity is the Rob Otto Fund. Siciliano took home the 2007 championship.
The group went from 14 last season to a more traditional 12 this year, including the addition of Georgopoulos.
Each team still playing could have some trouble at quarterback this weekend, with Otto choosing between Philip Rivers (at Tampa) and Jake Delhomme (at N.Y. Giants), and Wright down to Matt Ryan (at Minnesota) and Ben Roethlisberger (at Tennessee), at least as of Thursday night. Each did start the weekend well, though, with Team Detroit finding 89 total yards and a touchdown in the form of Indy’s Dominic Rhodes and Team Cleveland getting 108 yards and a score from Reggie Wayne.
