This Saturday, Tom Medvitz will reconnect with co-workers from a job he left three years ago.

The occasion isn't a conference or even a wedding -- it's the draft for a fantasy football league that includes five guys whom he worked with for two years in Portland, Ore.

"It really is an excuse to talk to them," he said. "It's a reason to check back in every year."

More than 16 million Americans play fantasy sports, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, with more than 80 percent of them playing fantasy football. Although no hard data exists on the subject, many leagues are created at work, where Internet connections are fast and plentiful.

And the month of August, when most fantasy football leagues hold their drafts, is a time when friends and former co-workers, some of whom haven't communicated with each other since Peyton Manning hoisted the Lombardi trophy six months ago, re-establish their ties.

From a business perspective, the game can serve as a networking tool to preserve critical relationships in a age when co-workers might be scattered throughout the country, if not the world.

When Sean Roberts participates in his fantasy draft in the next week or so, it will include co-workers from jobs doing medical research in Omaha, Neb., in the late 1990s, teaching English in Japan from 2000 to 2002, working at the Urban Redevelopment Authority in Pittsburgh for the last four years and even a three-year stint as a lifeguard in high school.

His fantasy sports leagues currently encompass friends, family and co-workers in Sweden, Japan, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Tennessee, New York, Indiana and Nebraska, as well as Pittsburgh.

"We haven't really talked since January," he said. "Now I'll get an update on how people are doing. It's nice because you're able to communicate with a large group of people, and you don't have to devote a huge amount of time to calling them."

And Mr. Roberts, 30, of Greenfield, is hoping to use fantasy sports as a business tool on two fronts.

First, he just started a real estate development and consulting company with a friend of his, who, naturally, also is in two of his fantasy sports leagues. "Now that I'm going to be staying in the real estate field, it certainly is great for maintaining contacts with people," he said. "It gives you that doorway in."

Mr. Roberts also is in the midst of launching a separate fantasy sports business. His brother and two friends have spent the last three years building a Web site that combines multiple sports into one fantasy league. Users can customize the league to the sports of their choosing and start a league at any time of the year.

The Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project soon will offer the game, called Fantasy Sports All Stars, as one of its sports offerings, said Mr. Roberts.

Chicago resident Michael Henby was so taken by the idea of fantasy sports as a workplace advancement tool that last year he wrote a book about the subject, "Fantasy Kick: Leverage the Networking Opportunities of Fantasy Football to Give your Career the Kick it Needs."

Mr. Henby started his career as a phone sales representative for a large health care company and joined a fantasy football league that included employees from all ranks of the company.

In the company break room, he said, he found himself talking to vice presidents about a possible trade, or his team's recent performance. After he became commissioner of the league, "I found at the holiday party, all the executives were introducing me to other executives, saying, 'Wow, this guy is doing a great job with the fantasy league.' "

Mr. Henby eventually was promoted into the marketing department and since has taken another job, but continues to keep in touch with co-workers there.

"What happens is, you form these relationships with people, then people come and go; but the league still maintains," he said. "The league still continues."

When fantasy sports are used in the business world, the rules are slightly different than, perhaps, a league of college fraternity brothers, said Mr. Henby.

In a business setting, it might be a good idea to tone down the profanity and trash talking, he said. But more importantly, you want to play the game according to the same principles you'd like people to view you by in the workplace.

"You see some people who will trade like crazy and make unfair trades," said Mr. Henby. "They make it about them winning; and in the meantime, they've missed out on networking opportunities. If you ask most guys in a league, they might not even remember who won; but they do remember who crossed who and all the soap opera stuff."

Indeed, fantasy sports aren't for the faint of heart. Mr. Medvitz, who now works for medSage, a Forest Hills biotech startup, collects material year-round for trash-talking purposes -- mainly about the hometowns of his fellow league members.

When the Philadelphia Phillies became the first team to lose 10,000 games this month, for example, he made a mental note to use the stat as ammunition against a league member from the City of Brotherly Love.

A girlfriend tried to co-own a fantasy team with him once and dropped out. "She thought it was mean," he said.

If fantasy football is used in the workplace, employers should be wary that it not be simply a virtual locker room, said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

"It could be another form of the old boys club where people have strong relationships that are cliqueish and exclusionary," he warned.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimates that 93 percent of fantasy players are male, though association President Jeff Thomas said that figure probably misses some women who co-own teams with their significant others.

Mr. Challenger recommends that firms actually might want to sponsor leagues to make the games more inclusive.

"It should be something where people can get together," he said. "One of the keys to happiness at a workplace is to have a friend, and companies that recognize that look for ways to bring people together around something other than the latest projects."

As the popularity of fantasy sports has grown, people increasingly don't have much choice but to get involved in some way.

"If you're not familiar with it, you'll hear people talking constantly," said Mr. Roberts. "It's really in our culture big time."