Have you heard? There’s a mini uproar among bloggers about what’s happening at AOL Fanhouse. It seems as if someone in corporate finally discovered that there’s huge money to be made in fantasy sports on the web, and decided, ‘hey, we should get into the fantasy game!’

The natural move when you’re playing catch-up: Combine what you want to go after with attractive women, and presto, the clicks come. And let’s be honest here - who makes up the bulk of the fantasy sports audience? Nerds.

We’re solidly in this nerdy group - though it doesn’t mean we’d view the aforelinked videos - our fantasy baseball team is our first stop each morning and we make sure to check it right before the night games begin in case Rick Ankiel’s getting the day off. When the fantasy football waiver wire opens on Tuesdays (in most leagues), don’t act like you’re not all over that, hoping to jump in and grab the Saints backup tight end because Jeremy Shockey tweaked a toe. Remember that scene in Knocked Up where the wife thinks her husband is cheating on her and she slyly follows him to a house in an attempt to catch him in the act … and he’s at a fantasy sports draft? Funny because it’s true.

Is the idea of barely-clothed 20-something women talking about whether or not you should draft Reggie Bush in round three or four of your draft complete lunacy? Certainly. But does it work? We can only assume as much. How else would these girls (or their company) have sold the idea to AOL? They likely presented stats on their website, the figures were bananas, and the suits at AOL envisioned readers spending hours watching these women and managing their fantasy teams.

And that’s why we’re a bit surprised by the outrage; this is what corporate suits do - they think, ‘hey this might work!’ and then incorporate it, regardless of whether the readers like it or not. (Aside: Some of you have asked about Awful Announcing’s post about the Fanhouse fantasy ads that have appeared here and on Deadspin. The ads were new to us, too. But Fantasy Sports Ventures handles the placement of ads for us, and the ads have zero impact on the posts we write or what we link to.) It may be worth noting that CBS Sports (Amber Wilson) and Yahoo Sports (decolletage-baring Ashley Russell) both have women presenting sports videos, and they’re both prominently displayed on their respective sites. If it isn’t clear already: women + video = cha-ching with advertisers.

Guys surf the web, and guys like women. If you’re in a corporate setting, don’t you want to appeal to your target demo? It’s why newspapers are going heavy with the galleries of women. Oh, and the screengrab from above? Came from the middle of this ESPN video.