In a boring meeting? Taking a long car ride (when you’re not driving)? Watching Reality TV with the family? Basically — do you need something else to do?

Well, RapidDraft.com hopes you download their new, free iPhone Mock Draft app and then get lost in the fantasy of RapidDraft free fantasy football.

The smart-phone population is growing rapidly, to the point that half of all American cell-phone users are expected to own one by the end of 2011.

The free RD app, developed for World Fantasy Games by Advanced Sports Media, allows you to practice up on your drafting whenever and wherever you want — even if you can’t find the time to sit in front of your computer and mock out a bunch of drafts. Practicing, of course, can only help prepare you for the real thing — whether you’re trying out the full product at RapidDraft.com or meeting up for draft weekend with your friends.

Like the game itself, the app lets you pick your draft spot and select against 11 avatars, so that you can try your hand from various spots using various strategies. A bonus is that if you get interrupted and can’t finish the mock draft all at once, the interface will simply pause and wait for you to resume.

Users may draft up to five times per draft position online, but unlimited times on the iPhone (affording plenty of practice before you take your free shots at the real thing and a $100,000 grand prize). The app also contains settings that make it easier to draft when you don’t have spreadsheets and preview magazines in front of you. Player recommendations make it easier to sift through the list, and you can toggle settings on items such as bye-week conflicts and preferred drafting style.

You may want to check it out as you get ready for the 2010 fantasy football season.

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

– CBSSports.com filled the marketing manager position we previously posted but is now in search of a marketing coordinator. Like the manager post, this is a full-time job set in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

– Aspiring fantasy writers should also take a look at the Jobs page and check in with World Fantasy Games.

– Fantasy Postseason has added games for the upcoming NBA and NHL playoffs to its repertoire.

– ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary on fantasy sports, Silly Little Game, will premier on April 20 (a Tuesday) at 8 p.m. This site shows a clip (interview snippets with some members of Daniel Okrent’s original rotisserie baseball league), as well as some re-air dates and times.

– AppleGazette.com gives an “A” to the Yahoo! 2010 fantasy baseball app for the iPhone.

– SportsGrumblings.com’s “supercomputer,” Mighty Max, is now generating weekly and daily player rankings for fantasy baseball.

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

If you are even the most casual of sports fans, work in an office or live somewhere in the United States, you know what March means on the sporting calendar.

It’s “madness” time in college basketball, when brackets abound and pools are plentiful. Xerox Monday — after Selection Sunday — takes many of us to the copy machine so that we can take way too many cracks at building that impossible perfect bracket.

RapidDraft.com, however, wants you to consider a different way to pick your teams: via fantasy draft.

“Innovation is the key to growth in the world of fantasy sports,” said Jeff Thomas, CEO of World Fantasy Games. “Most fantasy companies offer a bracket contest. Nobody has a draft. Applying our patent-pending social gaming model to the NCAA Tournament was a natural, with on-demand live drafts inside our virtual-world draft room. RapidDraft is true differentiation in the marketplace and can complement a bracket game on any fantasy site.”

RapidDraft Hoops Madness pits a consumer against three avatars backed by expert opinion and strategy. The four teams tip off with a 16-round draft in which every NCAA tournament team is selected. (The two play-in participants act as one team here. And yes, NCAA, that is a play-in game.) The “Fantasy Pros” draft according to specifications set forth by this site, SportsBuff.com and Sara Holladay — best known as the FF Librarian.

“I’ve never had the chance to combine fantasy sports with March Madness, so I’m excited to see that RapidDraft has stepped up to the plate and taken it to the next level,” Holladay told FSB.com. “Everything is better with a touch of fantasy.”

Once the four fantasy squads are drafted, you score points for every victory by one of your NCAA teams. Points are awarded in a seed-times-round format — meaning a second-round win by a No. 4 seed, for example, would garner 8 points. Another 1.5 bonus points are available each time your total score for a round beats that of a Fantasy Pro team in your league, up to 4.5 bonus points per round.

“I love the unique concept that RapidDraft has come up with,” said Jim Day, an avid fantasy gamer, founder of FantasyFootballWhiz.com and host of multiple shows on BlogTalkRadio’s The Fantasy Sports Channel. “The draft is something you just don’t see on any other March madness contest and will provide another exciting way to play one of the most enjoyable and exciting tournaments in sports.”

In the end, of course, you’re really competing against all of the other human players, with 50 guaranteed cash prizes and a $2,500 grand prize. That’s not a bad return on a free entry. Consumers can draft up to twelve times each, three times per draft position.

The different format might scare off a bracket traditionalist at the start, but the system still awards you for properly projecting which higher seeds will stick around longer and grabbing a Cinderella or two. Just imagine how many points George Mason would have gotten you back in 2006, or Davidson just two years ago.

It’s a new twist with different layers of strategy for experienced bracket fillers, yet Hoops Madness is still easy enough for the beginner or casual player. At its base, this is still just a game in which you pick the teams you think will win.

As more and more people grow familiar and comfortable with fantasy games, though, it might just prove a format that catches on big-time.

“Consumers will play both,” Thomas said. “If you follow college basketball and you love the excitement of a fantasy draft, RapidDraft Hoops Madness is for you.”

Should you decide to play along, here’s a bit of unsolicited advice: Don’t wait too long to take a shot on Xavier. A top-15 team in KenPom.com’s rankings for adjusted offensive efficiency, the Musketeers have a decent-looking draw. As a 6-seed, they could score 36 Hoops Madness points by winning just three games. A No. 1 seed, by comparison, would tally just 21 by winning the title.

(Note: FantasySportsBusiness.com is owned and operated by World Fantasy Games.)

“It will be hard to ever replicate the feeling again when it comes to fantasy football.”

Most (all?) of us play fantasy football each year, whether it be with a group of friends, some co-workers or a faceless online community of folks you know only by their message-board handles. Some of us even win some money from time to time.

We probably won’t come close to $250,000, though, which is the amount that caused David Girard to utter the quote at the beginning of this article.

“After 17 years of participating in fantasy football I feel as though I’ve reached my pinnacle and its only downhill from here,” Girard said after winning the inaugural grand prize at RapidDraft.com.

Of course, Girard has no plans to quit playing fantasy football, a hobby in which he has participated since 1993, when he was a junior at Kansas State and scoring was done by hand with the sports page and a notebook. He, like most fantasy players, said that the joy of winning and the bragging rights held over leaguemates are the real motivators for competing in fantasy. Girard even said that his experience of once finishing second in a $250-entry, winner-take-all league soured him on the “big-money” format.

“I’ve learned that playing fantasy football for the thrill of the win and the bragging rights, not the money, is what drives me,” Girard said. “When I entered the RapidDraft contest, I saw it as a cool way to play fantasy football. I never dreamed it would turn into a ‘big-money’ ordeal.”

Girard, who sat in second place by a mere half-point heading into the NFL’s just-completed Week 16, said he couldn’t even bear to watch the afternoon contests this past Sunday.

“I checked the stats often and even ruled myself out of the contest when I saw (Chad) Ochocinco and (Jermichael) Finley had one catch between them heading into halftime of the early games,” he said. “The only game I watched that day was the Sunday night game with Dallas. At that point I didn’t know exactly what Romo needed for me to win, but I knew it was well within reason that he could score enough to do the job. Obviously at this point I feel inclined to join a Tony Romo fan club or something.”

Girard, who co-owns a small grocery store in Kansas with his brother, said that Finley was a key player in his title run and that some early-round luck paid off as well.

“Going into the draft I remember thinking I wanted to land two top wide receivers with my first two picks considering it was a ppr league,” he said. “My hope was that they would be Fitzgerald and Andre Johnson and Moss as the next choice. As destiny would have it Fitz went (one slot before mine), so I went with Johnson and then Moss went shortly after that leaving me staring at Chris Johnson in the second round. Luckily I didn’t pass him up.

Girard, like many a fantasy owner playing in point-per-reception formats this season, said that Ray Rice was another central piece of his championship.

“To get an everyweek stud running back in round 6 doesn’t happen very often,” he said. “The other pick that stands out to me was getting Finley in the 19th round. Most of the year he floundered around on my bench. Thankfully I held onto him and that led to probably the one lineup decision that won the contest for me.”

Girard said the victory is too fresh for him to have made plans for the money yet but that most of it will probably wind up in college funds for his four children. He also said he might try to leverage this win into some involvement with the fantasy sports industry.

Whatever happens on those fronts, though, the one thing that Girard can count on is his wife’s “new appreciation” for the hobby.

“Something makes me think that fantasy football won’t be such a ‘waste of time’ from now on.”

(Note: World Fantasy Games owns and operates RapidDraft and FSB.com.)