FANTASY FOOTBALL IS TV'S REALITY.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH Media

In his new book ``Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie,'' author Mark St. Amant spends a chapter responding to those media know-it-alls who contend that he and other mercenary stat freaks have ruined the NFL for everyone else, spawned a generation of nonfans and made individual numbers replace point spreads as the single biggest reason why viewers stayed glued to the set during a meaningless blowout.

``Face it ... FF has almost single-handedly caused the NFL to explode to supernova-like proportions in this country and all over the world,'' writes St. Amant, who abandoned a job as an advertising exec to devote full time to his pursuit to win his league championship in 2003.

``FF fattens the league's coffers thanks to DirecTV Sunday Ticket ... in short, it extends the overall lifespan (of) the NFL.

``If anything, fantasy football enhances the overall marketability of real football. Which ramps up the excitement of sports in general. Which makes these `freaks' want more information about sports and, now, fantasy sports. Which gives columnists a whole new world to write about and makes people buy more of the newspapers that pay their salaries.''

Which also forces the networks in charge of televising the games to reconsider who really makes up their core audience these days.

The fact that ESPN, Fox and CBS now have popular Websites that push fantasy league participation (for a cost) 24 hours a day means this isn't just a guilty pleasure anymore for closet fanatics. Now, it's very much all out in the open.

Those in charge at CBS and Fox, for example, aren't shy anymore about admitting that they can't ignore the stat-spewing fantasy geeks among us - there are 15 million willing participants, according to the latest estimate of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, and 93 percent of them do football.

``Absolutely, in the last two to three years we've stepped up our coverage,'' said Fox Sports chairman David Hill. ``What we've discovered on foxsports.com is that it's the biggest growing aspect of the coverage, and in the pregame show we plan to do more coverage.

``We're very aware of it. The growth has been spectacular and it's very healthy I believe for the game and for our coverage and it's something we pay more and more attention to. We devote a show (``Ultimate Fantasy Football'') on Fox Sports Net on Friday nights to it. It's something across the board and we're enjoying covering it.''

One of the latest tweaks to CBS' coverage this season will be to include a ``StatTrax'' banner graphic that comes out of the score-and-time box to update key offensive stats after every play rather than after every three or four plays.

CBS Sports president Sean McManus said that, as his networks continue the process to buy CBS Sportsline.com, it's clear that fantasy players want more statistical info and more quickly.

``All the surveys we took showed that fantasy players want a constant steam of data, and we think we can do it in an unobtrusive way,'' said McManus. ``A fan of football wants to know what key players are doing, too, so they can also appreciate the graphics.''

The long arms of the NFL's media outlets continue to embrace the concept as well, probably hoping it will replace gambling as one of the main reasons driving people to the sport. NFL.com (which is run by CBS Sportsline.com) has its own link trying to lure folks into starting their own leagues or join the one it has for $14.96 a pop, and it has a link to a weekly fantasy report newsletter. It also set up this year a way for fantasy players to input their teams into a program for $35 a year and see weekly video highlights of their performances.

The NFL Network, which doesn't show games on Sunday, instead has something much better for stat freaks - a show from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. called ``Red Zone,'' which supplies reams of live stats from all the games in progress. The NFL Network also held a draft of its own Tuesday using eight pseudo-celebs (including Dean Cain, Paul Rudd and Josh Charles), and they'll come in every Wednesday to fill time and update everyone on how their teams are performing.

As for St. Amant, who also runs a popular sports satire Website called TheSportsRag.com, he admits in his book that despite taking a year off from his job, his Acme Fantasy Football, Inc., team finished third in the league last season. The thing he seems most upset about: During the league's trophy presentation in Houston just prior to the Super Bowl, the winner got his picture taken with ESPN's Suzy Kolber.

With that kind of incentive, it's a wonder more don't play.

--The gross, the bawdy and the useless: As the networks get closer to the end of their current NFL contracts - the eight-year deal that brings the league $17.6 billion expires after 2005, but the league already has been meeting with the networks about renewal numbers - here's a capsule of what each promises to change (or not) for the upcoming season:

Fox: According to a recent TV Guide poll of 1,027 adults, the network received 43 percent of the votes of the fans who were asked to name their favorite place to watch football. ``Fox NFL Sunday'' also was voted the most informative (34 percent) and most entertaining (41 percent), and Terry Bradshaw, who has made gauche seem posh, was named by 44 percent as the favorite pregame personality (second was Fox's Howie Long with 16 percent).

So why mess with anything? They haven't.

As for what games the network will send each Sunday to this lack-of-a- home-team market, KTTV Channel 11 continues an online poll on its Website sports link (www.fox11la.com) that closes at 11:59 p.m. each Thursday. It appears that one can vote as many times as they like. The results are released on Friday morning's ``Good Day L.A.''

CBS: According to the aforementioned TV Guide poll, the network was last (with 12 percent) in the vote of favorite place to watch football. ``The NFL Today'' barely rated in the entertainment/informative meter, and the new A-game team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms got 7 percent for the best broadcasters, behind the 10 percent who voted ``Don't know.''

True, Nantz and Simms hadn't even done a game together when the poll was taken. They'll be on the Oakland-Pittsburgh opener Sunday, and Simms says that after two exhibition games, he's more and more optimistic they'll click just as he did with Greg Gumbel, who's back in the studio to officiate between Dan Marino (who briefly left and then came back), Boomer Esiason and Shannon Sharpe (who replaces Deion Sanders).

But will all that change really matter?

ABC: Will Year 35 of the network's longest-running prime-time show finally run out of clout and slide over to ESPN? That's the info that keeps swirling as the network, which pays $550 million a year for the NFL rights, figures to lose another $150 million when this year is finished despite the fact it produces the strongest prime-time ratings than any other show on the network.

Meanwhile, as the superteam of Al Michaels and John Madden continues to bond, the only change worth noting on the network's broadcast is the latest female sideline reporter, who we hesitate in identifying since, in this business, she could easily be here today and gone Tafoya.

ESPN: The game ratings were up in 2003 (7.7) over 2002 (7.4), and for the 17th year in a row, the Sunday night contest was the highest-rated series on ad-supported cable. Plus, the ``Sunday NFL Countdown'' show, despite the Rush Limbaugh Incident, won its second Emmy in three years.

But all we care about is they've kept the segment on ``Monday Night Countdown'' where Stuart Scott asks Madden questions about the upcoming game, and Madden tries to pretend he understands what was asked.

CAPTION(S):

box

Box:

SOUND BYTES

By Tom Hoffarth