New Rivals for Yahoo!

Some suggestions aren't supposed to be taken literally. Many Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) watchers have been egging on the company to hook up with rivals. It did so yesterday -- only it was with Rivals.com, instead of one of its many online rivals.

Oh, the website will be a good fit for a company trying to make a bigger splash in sporting world news and fantasy leagues. Rivals.com is a leader in high school and college recruiting, ranking top players around the country.

It's a specialized niche. Not every sports fan wants in-depth scouting reports as star high school athletes narrow down their college commitment choices. However, Rivals.com watches more than 185,000 paying subscribers and draws roughly 2 million monthly visitors, so clearly they're not all hungry college recruiters.

Like News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Scout.com, these sites have proven useful to fervent sports fanatics, proud college alumni members, and die-hard fantasy players.

Don't dismiss that last group. CBS (NYSE: CBS) takes its Sportsline.com leagues so seriously that it held fantasy football conventions around the country last year, as well as teaming up with Buffalo Wild Wings (Nasdaq: BWLD) to host fantasy draft parties at nearly 400 of the sauced wings specialist's locations.

Clearly, this won't be the last time that Yahoo! opens its pocketbook to acquire a traffic magnet. I went over a few other possibilities yesterday. As the first buyout announced since CEO Terry Semel's resignation earlier this week, this small deal may warrant little more than a trivia stumper in a few years. For now, though, it's a good way to stand taller with rivals -- not Rivals.com -- in the online sporting world like ESPN, Sportsline, and FOX Sports.

Yahoo! is a Stock Advisor recommendation. Buffalo Wild Wings is a Hidden Gems recommendation. Try sampling any or all of the newsletters with a free 30-day trial subscription. 

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is one of those fantasy football nuts, participating in a pair of Sportsline fantasy football leagues that date back to the 1990s. He does not own shares in any of the stocks in this story. Rick is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.