fantasy football

The football season's not over yet at FX. The cable network has announced that it's renewing fanstasy football league series 'The League' for a third season.

According to TVGuide.com, FX has ordered 13 episodes of the semi-improvisational comedy, which follows the members of a Chicago fantasy football league. Season 2 got off to a record-breaking start, and ratings overall were up four percent, with the show averaging 1.4 million viewers per episode.

Speaking about the renewal, exec producers Jackie ('Disturbia') and Jeff ('Curb Your Enthusiasm') Schaffer said, "We're thrilled to be doing a third season with our amazing cast and the most audacious network around."

The second season of FX's 'The League,' a show about five man-children and their fantasy football league, premiered to its best ratings ever last week.

The producers opened big by sending the crew to Las Vegas for their fantasy draft, where Cincinnati Bengal Chad Ochocinco made a cameo. The move paid off; viewers of its big-brother show 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia' and sports fans alike have latched on, and 'The League' just might be breaking out this season.

(S01E06) "What I tell you? Hot girl. Volkswagen Jetta. It's a law! Like water. Or dinosaurs." - Taco

I really want to like The League. It's full of things I love in a TV show -- male camaraderie, football, and endless dick jokes -- yet I still can't get into it. But, the like the good little TV blogger that I am, I re-screened the first five episodes before viewing the season finale earlier today to make sure I gave it a fair shake.

The League is far from the worst thing on TV, and it's definitely the the best comedy FX has rolled out since It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. However, I'm gonna stick with what I've said already -- there's some serious potential here, but a lot of things need to change before The League returns for its second season next summer.

Looks like FX has finally found a friend for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia -- the network announced yesterday that it was renewing The League for a thirteen episode second season.

While this doesn't come a surprise, I'm still not 100% sold. In my initial review of The League, I wasn't high on it for numerous reasons. There was far too much reliance on one-off jokes only intended to create buzz (vaginal hubris, anyone?) and Jon Lajoie seemed like he had no purpose other than singing YouTube-friendly potty-mouthed songs. Factor in the utter lack of meaningful football references and the show was all over the place.

Fantasy football is a tricky thing. You either love it or you hate it and that largely depends on whether you're good or bad at it. For the most part, the same can be said about FX's newest comedy The League. When it's good, it is good, but when it's bad... well, you get the picture.

The show, which premieres tomorrow night, Thursday 10/29, at 10:30 p.m. after It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is FX's first solid attempt to produce a lasting companion piece to Sunny and, given some of its predecessors (like Starved or Testees), it'd be easy to write The League off. But, like a two-minute drill that gradually picks up steam, The League might actually go... all... the... way.

OK -- no more football metaphors.

Usually, when one network or channel has a good idea, other networks try to copy it. FX is doing it from a few sources with its new comedy The League, a comedy about a bunch of suburbanites participating in a fantasy football league.

Since the creative talent behind the show is also behind Curb Your Enthusiasm, it's pretty obvious where the "semi-scripted" nature of this program is coming from. However, when I hear the premise of this show I can't help but think of it as a variation of The Guild, a web series about online gamers starring Felicia Day from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog.

This new program has enough talent and an interesting premise that it could wind up a winner. It's amazing how FX is branching itself out with different kinds of shows. First animation, now this. And to think fX (note the lowercase "f") started as an experiment by Fox in interactive television in 1994.