There are plenty of places — big, well-known places — already on the Web where someone can go to play NFL fantasy football. Even a brand with as much history behind its name as Athlon Sports faces a daunting task in trying to break through.

Their solution: innovate. The result: Pro+College Fantasy Football.

“We wanted to create additional value,” interactive director Nathan Karp told FSB.com. “Having a multi-level dynasty type game was a good fit for us. It builds off of our brand identity, which is stronger in college than pro, and our history in the fantasy game market where we pioneered the college fantasy football angle in 1996.”

Any college football junky knows that the Athlon season preview magazine has been around awhile. That pioneering history in college fantasy games was actually acquired by Athlon just more than a year ago when it purchased U-Sports.

U-Sports fantasy college football ran last season under the Athlon label, and Karp said it was actually easy to add a pro platform to the existing infrastructure. The NFL, after all, with its 32 teams and about 40 eligible players per team (sorry, O-linemen) presents a universe probably not even one-quarter the size of the 120-team Division I field (I refuse to call it the Bowl Subdivision).

“The big challenges were more about the game play itself,” Karp said. “The two biggest issues were how to accommodate the different starts and ends to the pro and college seasons and how to refer to the team names.”

Athlon is avoiding the use of team nicknames to steer clear of any trademark infringement. Instead, debate finally settled on displaying NFL teams in all caps (e.g. ARIZONA) and colleges in normal case (Arizona).

Otherwise, the game does just what it says, combining college and pro players in the same pool and giving users the ability to drain that pool a bit if desired. Those creating leagues can include any number of teams from the entire field — meaning your dream of a game comprising only the Mountain West and NFC South can finally come true. (The Big Ten, unfortunately, thought these rules applied to real life as well.)

“You can play with all 152 teams if you are so inclined, or create an All-Texas league featuring everyone from the Dallas Cowboys to the Baylor Bears,” Karp said. “We have found over and over again that our users want flexibility above anything else.”

Karp said that it’s hard to develop any real expectations for signups, since this is the first time such a model has been brought to market. He did say, however, that the effort particularly targets two groups of fantasy players:

• dynasty leaguers who want to extend their rosters to college players before they get drafted
• those with college and pro leagues looking to combine

Karp concedes that these aren’t large user bases, but again, entering a saturated market calls for something unique.

“We realize that those are both niche/hardcore audiences, but we also hope to draw attention to our more typical fantasy games and content through this unique offering that again blazes a trail in fantasy sports,” he said.

Athlon offers pro- and college-only fantasy leagues for free, while Pro+College costs $100 ($130 after July).

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has announced the agenda for its upcoming winter conference, including a featured appearance from half of the husband-wife creative team behind “The League.”

– We tie our fantasy fortunes to the performances of football players, anglers, bull riders and “American Idol” contestants. Why not take a crack at predicting global performance with “fantasy geopolitics“? If there’s one thing the worldwide recession showed us, it’s that we can’t do much worse than the folks actually in charge of this stuff.

– “Sundays of Our Lives” touts itself as a fantasy football comedy soap opera for the Web. Will it be funny? Will it be stupid? Will it at least pay more attention to the football than “The League” does? We’ll see when the first episode debuts. Until then, here’s the trailer.

– Athlon acquired college fantasy games producer U-Sports earlier this year, and the combined outlet is now live with its first season of fantasy college basketball. Although U-Sports was a pay site on its own, the Athlon version of the game is free.

– Juliann Haynes checks in on the SportsJudge blog with Part 1 of her argument for why women should play, or at least support their significant others in playing, fantasy sports.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page:

– Athlon has “officially” kicked off it’s 2009 college football coverage, including the first year of its incorporation of U-Sports.

– Brian Moore, owner of FootballHangout.com is looking to sell his site.

– RotoWire’s Chris Liss presents the rules for proper etiquette in the fantasy trade market: (1) Make an offer. Don’t ask, “What do you want for … ?” (2) Respond in a timely fashion to reasonable offers. (3) Don’t try to rob the other owner. (4) Try to skip the snark when responding to ridiculous offers. (5) After a successful deal, bit your trading partner good luck. (I don’t know about you, but I and my leaguemates aren’t nearly this courteous.)

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

College football fans know Athlon Sports best for producing one of the top season-preview magazines available. The company announced a move Wednesday, though, that will position it well in the growing area of fantasy college football and keep customers more engaged throughout the season.

“We started talking about an acquisition last October,” said Nathan Karp, former director of U-Sports and now director of fantasy sports operations for Athlon. “Very quickly we realized that this relationship would be a classic win-win and negotiated terms fairly quickly.”

The move is meant to integrate the U-Sports commissioner product — which was established back in 1996 — into Athlon’s online content, adding to each outlet a component that it hadn’t previously offered.

Existing users of U-Sports will still find the familiar site at the old address, but Karp says it will soon operate under the url usports.athlonsports.com – a destination that is already active.

“The only change existing users will readily notice is an increased focus on analysis and advice,” Karp told FSB.com. “U-Sports’ strength is providing a superior fantasy commissioner service, and we purposefully never attempted to author content. Athlon Sports, on the other hand, has been covering college sports since 1967 and has always been the leader for college football analysis.”

The company also hopes that the fantasy contests will draw more consistent traffic throughout the year — or at least the specific seasons — rising to meet the spike that occurs with the open of football season.

Karp said that U-Sports will also be a key piece of Athlon’s expanded online fantasy presence, which will include the launch of a new website, AthlonFantasySports.com.

“This site will showcase Athlon’s fantasy offerings, which primarily consist of U-Sports, fantasy content at AthlonSports.com and Grogan’s Sports,” Karp said.

Although football sits at the forefront of the deal and carries a larger audience, U-Sports also brings a basketball commissioner product that Karp said will also have a presence.

“The primary focus is, of course, on college football, which has a strong potential to capture the second largest fantasy audience,” Karp said. “However, there is still an audience for college fantasy basketball and unlike football, you can argue that the college game has more popularity than the professional counterpart in basketball.”