It’s the end of August. That means one thing: Fantasy Football.

The NFL regular season kicks off September 9 in New Orleans, so these last few weeks of August have been abuzz with scouting reports, insider tips and sophisticated drafts all across the country. While I might have a bit more history with the NFL than my coworkers, when the season (and the smack talk) starts, that experience doesn’t mean much if my fantasy team comes up short on Tuesday morning.

I manage to play in a few fantasy leagues every year, and I’m always looking for an edge: from making draft selections to benching players in a given week to negotiating trades with my opponents. That’s why I turned to one of The Planet’s customers for help. Footballguys has trusted us to host their infrastructure for quite a few years now, so I return that trust in a small way by living on their fantasy football site during the months of August and September.

It looks like I’m not the only one:

It goes without saying that they must have a pretty good hosting provider to be able to handle those huge influxes of traffic.

A few of my coworkers still buy fantasy football magazines and rely on a healthy dose of ESPN to prepare for the season, but with fantasy football’s huge popularity surge in recent years, everyone seems to be shifting toward online outlets for the latest news and stats. Time is of the essence when a top draft pick gets sidelined for the season or a new standout emerges from the pack, and depending on how you respond, it can make or break your season. When your pride is on the line, it’s important to have reliable resources keeping you up to date.

Because Kevin just featured a few of our customers who are doing some exciting things on our infrastructure, I wanted to send Footballguys.com some love with its own blog post. If you’ve already got your team drafted, check out their free Rate My Team application, and if you can’t get enough fantasy facts and stats, grab their iPhone app to take the info on the road.

-Keith

P.S. If you happen to be one of my fantasy league competitors, please disregard this blog post. Footballguys.com is a cool site, but they don’t want to help you beat me.