The end of office productivity as we know it

Ever wanted to answer the question “How can I possibly do less at my job while seemingly looking like I’m working my ass off?”  Well, if you play fantasy sports, the answer may finally have arrived.

I am a sports geek.  Self confessed, I am a sports addict.  I’ve written a sports blog for five years now without ever getting a cent from it.  I’ve played fantasy sports since 1998, spending more to play in leagues than I’ve ever won from them.  So news like this makes a guy like me (namely, a tech geek/sports addict combo) sit up and take notice.

Fantasy sports (most notably football and baseball, though there are rumors of fantasy NASCAR leagues floating around out there… losers.) have morphed from something that only Dungeons & Dragons nerds with a passing fancy in sports used to play in their basement into a multi-billion dollar a year mega-business.  Yahoo.com, ESPN.com, talentedmrroto.com, whatifsports.com – each of these sites drives in ridiculous amounts of money every year through fantasy sports.  But aside from Microsoft, what Internet giant is conspicuously missing from that list?

That’s right – Google.  But no longer.  It looks as if Google is quickly working to remedy that absence.  With the way that Google has worked incessantly to make all of their web-based application integrate seamlessly with one another – Gmail, GChat, Gtalk, Google Finance, Google Maps, and the newly announced Google cell phone operating system (as Corey detailed a few weeks ago), is there any doubt that Google will develop the single best fantasy sports platform for the majority of web users?

Now, I know you’re all still wondering when I’m going to show you how to kill as much time at your desk as possible without actually looking bored.  Well, here it is.  ESPN.com fantasy games are probably blocked out by your company’s internet provider.  Same for Yahoo fantasy sports.  I’d be 100% shocked if your company had ever heard of Talentedmrroto.com, but if you goto the site enough, someone will catch on shortly and start blocking it out.

But there will never come a day when any sane company will block out any page involving the words “Google.com” (except for perhaps people working at Yahoo, Google’s mortal enemy.)  Meaning that you can expect to spend hours and hours surfing through pages of stats to decide whether you should start Randy Moss over Terrell Owens this week, or which shortstop in your “big” fantasy baseball league has a better pitching matchup.

And just imagine the possibilities once the Google Android cell phone OS becomes widely available?  Want to manage your fantasy teams through your cell phone?  Entirely possible.  Maybe you want to do it through voice commands on a smart phone or Blackberry, thus ensuring that you look like you’re stuck in an important phone conversation?  I’m convinced Google will figure this out.

Just don’t get caught in a meeting saying something like “Damn – Papi’s got a bad groin.  Let’s move Pronk into the utility spot”.  Actually, that might be pretty funny.  I should try that sometime.

(Special thanks to www.danshanoff.com for dropping this bit of info into a post earlier this week, thus ensuring I got absolutely nothing done for three days while researching this)