In another example of how fantasy sports has exploded, Zoneblitz.com brings you PaperSports.com. When Rod Yancy approached Zoneblitz with information about PaperSports.com I was skeptical. He’s helped found a fantasy site that offers tournaments and prizes for drafting teams that in football compete for one week at a time. I play in five football leagues right now and it’s hard to keep up with that, much less try to participate in leagues that draft anew each week.

But we asked Yancy a few questions and as he explained the concept I began to see where a model like this might appeal to some people. Here’s a Q&A with Mr. Yancy that gives some of the rationale behind starting the site and explains more specifically how it works.

Zoneblitz: Can you describe your site, PaperSports.com, and the concept behind a short-season?”

Yancy: PaperSports games last one week for football and one day for basketball and baseball. There are several reasons why we think that the “short-season” fantasy sports format is compelling, I’ll mention a few.

First, PaperSports users can pick their fantasy team(s) and know whether they won their tournament(s) within a matter of days. This is more conducive to real money play, because you don’t have to wait a whole season to get paid if you are going to win.

Second, since games are so frequent, users can join tournaments 24/7, seven days a week. With season-long fantasy sites, if you miss the live-draft you are basically out of luck for the entire season. With short-season fantasy sports at most you are out a week. Last, users don’t have to follow the same fantasy team the whole season, so if something changes and they want to pick a new line-up, all they have to do is play a new tournament.

Zoneblitz: Why do you think this is something that will appeal to fantasy players?”

Yancy: We think this will appeal to fantasy players for the reason mentioned above. More importantly we feel this will provide more opportunity to two types of players. One, for players who want a chance to win real money prizes every week, we are the perfect site for them. There are other sites that offer weekly prizes, but you have to sign up for an entire season to be eligible and you have no idea who you are playing against or how many people you are playing against.

So it’s hard to assess whether it is worth paying the money for a chance to win the prize. At PaperSports you know who you are playing against and what you are playing for, and thereby you have a good idea of your odds of winning before you pay to play. Second, we feel that we are a good fit for people who really like to play fantasy sports, but because of their job, or family, etc., they have trouble doing the research to stay competitive for the entire season.

Zoneblitz: When did you start the site and what kind of results have you gotten so far?”

Yancy: We launched in private beta the first week of this NFL season. We released a more polished version the fourth week. So far we have many satisfied customers and we are finding that almost 100% of our growth is through referrals from current players. So, the response has been overwhelming positive. That being said, we face well-established and well-funded competition (CBS, ESPN, to name two).

Our marketing budget wouldn’t pay for their monthly bandwidth, so we are forced to be creative and to form partnerships. As I said most of our new traffic comes from referrals, that is because we give our users several opportunities to invite friends, and they do often. Everyone is interested in growing the community.

Zoneblitz: What do players have to do to get involved with PaperSports.com?”

Yancy: To become a PaperSports.com user you need to go to www.PaperSports.com and register. All you need is a valid email. If you want to play for real money, you will need to fund your account with Visa, Master Card, or PayPal. For a limited time, we are matching a deposit of $25 with a $25 bonus that will be given to you incrementally after tournament play.