I’ve never been a sports fanatic like my roommates. They can rattle off any sports stat, from baseball to tennis, citing almost any game in history while monitoring every minute detail of the players, coaches and commentators. Needless to say, when they got into the fantasy sports drafts, it was far out of my league.

I, on the other hand, am a film nut – while they can spout home runs and touchdowns, I speak in purely filmic language: directors and writers, camera angles, artistic design, musical scores, etc. – it’s an addiction.

So, naturally, it was a shock to hear from IMDB that a new draft site had opened up: www.fantasymoguls.com, where they ask the billion-dollar question: Can you choose successful films better than the studios can? I wouldn’t be “”drafting”” based on free throws or assists; I could draft for my own studio based on the credibility of talent behind each film and the essential ability to discover a great project.

There are two ways of playing Fantasy Moguls: a basic version, where you draft films based on how much cash you expect them to earn or, my personal favorite, the advanced version, which factors in bankability, critical reviews and the amount of people in each theater. The latter proves a true challenge, forcing you to branch out beyond the blockbusters and look at the indies, which are often the big winners among advanced players (during the last draft it was the small foreign flick “”Volver”” which gave some drafters the silver bullet). And the unpredictability of the session adds to the aura of the game – films that appear to be big winners may turn out to be box office duds (that happened to me three times last draft) or vice versa.

The Web site has expanded considerably since it launched last fall, now covering the winter movie season, and is about to head into the long spring/summer haul from March to September. I’ll be playing – realizing now that there’s no difference between knowing sports or cinema in-depth, or for that matter music, history or architecture. Knowledge is knowledge, only with everyone’s personal touch.