You might have thought that Ray Lewis couldn’t get much more ridiculous than his spastic pregame dance and manic shouting (or maybe that was just me). You might have thought that Old Spice ads couldn’t get much sillier.

If that was the case, you were very wrong …

The tie-in here is that the spot takes a tongue-in-cheek shot at fantasy. Fortunately, the ad itself makes return fire thoroughly unnecessary.

Here’s hoping Lewis doesn’t actually show up to his day job in that bubble dress anytime soon.

FF Spin and Fantasy Football Crystal Ball kicked off its affiliation with USA Today by revealing Wednesday that Yahoo! led the way in its study of 2009 weekly player recommendations.

Yahoo! beat out a field of 10 fantasy sites to present the most accurate overall set of weekly position rankings, as measured by FF Spin and Fantasy Football Crystal Ball. Yahoo! took top honors for the season at wide receiver and team defense and reportedly edged KFFL for the overall prize. Fantasy Football Cafe, FF Today and FF Toolbox rounded out the top five.

“The overall winner was determined by a weighted average based on the cumulative results across all categories, a ’secret sauce’ of sorts,” FF Spin co-founder Scott Pashley wrote in the post on USA Today’s Fantasy Joe site. “Notably, two websites, FFToolbox.com and KFFL.com, actually outperformed the overall winner in one important category — top-five finishes by position. Each tallied five top-five finishes among the six categories tracked.”

JunkyardJake.com scored best at projecting quarterbacks, FF Today at running back and kicker, and FF Cafe with tight ends.

Throughout this season, the two “expert”-tracking outfits will be collaborating to present weekly grades at Fantasy Joe.

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

– The Yahoo! fantasy football app for Android has arrived and is available for free.

– Starting Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sports Grumblings will be joining the Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio lineup. The show will air for three hours and, according to its creators, “be a high-energy mix of fantasy sports talk and humor that is sure to get people talking.”

– Washington tight end Chris Cooley, an experienced fantasy player, says teammate Clinton Portis is “a steal” in Round 4, new quarterback Donovan McNabb is a “good pick” in Round 5 or 6 and Larry Johnson is his team’s “fantasy sleeper.” Good to see Cooley puts his biases aside when he plays fantasy. Then again, if you’re a teammate of Cooley’s, you have to love this type of homerism.

– As part of diving fully into its commercial alignment with the NFL, Papa John’s appears to be going hard after the fantasy player. One new campaign from the pizza chain will be asking fantasy leaguers all season to tell what makes theirs the best, with the winning group heading to next year’s NFL Draft. There will also be a contest to get free pizza delivered next Thursday (opening night) by NFL great Cris Carter, as well as fantasy football-themed Facebook badges available via the Papa John’s fan page. This writeup mentions the Papa campaign, as well as efforts by Buffalo Wild Wings, Hooters, Ruby Tuesday’s and T.G.I.Friday’s to reach out to fantasy players.

– Philadelphia tight end Brent Celek obviously ran a bit short on time and motivation in filling out the fantasy football league he opened to fans. The final three openings were filled on Tuesday, going to the first response with the Eagles’ final exhibition opponent, the first to correctly answer where the franchise played its first game back in 1933 (Baker Bowl) and — to ensure Celek will get targeted plenty — the first with a photo of quarterback Kevin Kolb’s jersey. You may all now continue on with your NFL season preparations.

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Eddie Royal isn’t the only NFL player using social media to gather a fantasy football league.

Eagles tight end Brent Celek — a rising fantasy commodity himself — has spent the summer recruiting 11 fans to compete against him in fantasy this season.

The initial post back on July 24 makes it appear the idea just kind of cropped up rather than being the product of any particular planning. It also, however, aimed to engage his followers on Facebook and Twitter right from the start.

“I’m thinking of having u all submit videos on here explaining why i should pick u to be in my league.. any other ideas?” Celek posted.

He did follow other ideas, adding his first leaguemate the same way Royal did — the simple method of “Who can respond to this message first?” Celek did start to have a bit more fun after that, though, offering the next spot to the first person to post a photo of the subject wearing Celek’s No. 87 jersey and standing by a stop sign. The winner managed to be selected just 8 minutes later … just in case we didn’t know that the public hangs on the words of athletes/celebrities (scoffs the guy writing an article about some football player filling a fantasy league).

Spot 3 was uninspiringly awarded to another fan who posted a photo of himself in an Eagles jersey (though he at least got a bit creative).

The next two apparently went to fans who successfully bored Celek to death with videos.

Position 6 called for commenters to describe why it will be the Eagles’ year, eliciting 336 comments. The winner (Rishi Sugla) posted three different times and appeared to finally win by presenting a quick Celek biography from Wikipedia info. (Tough to say he didn’t actually win for his name, though.)

Spot 7 went to a groom wearing an Eagles vest and singing the team’s fight song at his wedding.

The eighth guy somehow failed to annoy Celek enough with his fight-song rendition to be eliminated.

And that’s where Celek’s league stands, more than three weeks after his last selection. The tight end did promise Monday night, however, to fill the remaining three slots on Tuesday. Royal, of course, went to an eBay auction to raise $810 for charity in filling his final spot.

A similar method would seem an obvious choice for Celek, who already has his own foundation. Brent Celek’s Take Flight Foundation seeks to “provide seriously ill and physically challenged children throughout Greater Philadelphia with daily support and life changing experiences,” with an admirable goal of helping 2 million children by 2013.

Celek provides yet another example of the willingness of some athletes to engage fans directly via the still relatively new social-media channels now available. The fact that he chose fantasy also shows once again the prominence of our games at the highest level of the sports scene that drives them.

No matter how silly the resulting Facebook videos or how excruciatingly long the summarizing FSB.com posts, here’s hoping we see more examples of this kind of interaction. It can be fun and rewarding for all involved.