It’s about time. In a move surely to blunt the competitive edge owned by Yahoo! and ESPN, CBS Sports has announced that it has launched a beta site which provides fantasy sports information and news. The great thing about it is that it’s free and open to all. You do not have to have fantasy teams or leagues set up on CBS Sports to access the information. At ESPN, you have to subscribe and be an “Insider” to get access to their whole slew of information and analysis. At Yahoo!, there’s not a ton of information other than some rankings, player news, and weekly articles. And on that site, you have to dig a bit to find the information. It appears CBS is trying to provide that same information, and more, and make it accessible to all in an easy-to-navigate site.

There’s a ton of statistical information on the CBS site. Rankings, projections, trends, player analysis. There are also free articles that provide analysis, which is something ESPN tends to charge for. Finally, there is definitely some social networking aspects in play on the site, as exemplified by the polls, top-rated fans, team pages and message boards.

It’s good to see a company pushing the envelope and providing a service to fantasy sports fans while also making themselves more competitive in the fantasy sports space. This development is long overdue, for sure. For the information-hungry fantasy owner, more information is a good thing.