XSN Sports is not a fee-based service. It is absolutely free if you have the above required elements.

The two setups available on XSN Sports are a league and a tournament. The league or season mode, players go through a regular season schedule, while the top finishers participate in a single-elimination playoff. In the tournament mode, players are placed right away in a single-elimination bracket; with winners advancing till only one is left standing. It would have been nice if double elimination option was available, but you can't have everything this year, right?

First thing to do is log into the XSNSports.com website. Created a league or tournament and assign it a password. This is how your participants will join the league. Once the setup is done, the league/tournament name and password to the interested must be given out. Now, just boot up your Xbox and log into Xbox Live. Once there, you can just play a normal Xbox Live ladder game, or choose "XSNSports.com Game," which will require you to manually enter the tournament or league name along with the password. A minor grip here is that we need to type in the name letter by letter instead of choosing from a list. We should have at least been given the option of typing or choosing from a list. The league/tournament has a password attached anyway, so only the invited guests would be able to play a XSNSports.com game.

Back to the Microsoft Media Tournament, we faced off AEG (Microsoft's PR firm) in our opening tournament game. Doing what I just described above, Jon from AEG and I were able to get a game started quickly. A longtime Chargers fan, I couldn't choose any other team. Jon chose to go with the Raiders. I won't go into the details of NFL Fever 2004, that will be saved for an upcoming review, but generally, the game plays similiar to the past NFL Fever games, with some improvements and the new Read and Lead feature. Since this was my second full game, I decided not to go with the Read and Lead. I ended up winning the game 21-14. After the game is completed, the results were reported to XSN Sports.com within 15 minutes.

In the second round, I faced off with Steve from OperationSports. Steve and I know each other, so this was definitely a friendly competitive game. I came back choosing the same Chargers team while he went with the Cowboys. After he was moving the ball right along against my D, I tried to talk him into putting in Quincy Carter, but that didn't work. The Chargers passing offense was absolutely horrible this game against the Cowboys DBs. I decided to give the ball to LT and Neal, and boy did those two just rumble right over the Cowboys front line. The game was close the whole time, but the second pick by Donnie Edwards in the 4th quarter helped sway the momentum to the Chargers. The Cowboys had a final chance at the end, but the game ended with an overthrow to Joey Gallyway in the endzone.

This time, the result posted within 5 minutes of the competition of the game. I moved onto the championship game to face the winner of TeamXbox and NextLevel Gaming. The winner in the championship game will then move on to face the winners of the other media brackets. I'll be sure to check back in with how the championship game went, but until then, get those plans ready for NFL Fever 2004 and XSN Sports, because once both are live, NFL Fever 2004 fans will become addicted to the XSN Sports service, a feature that gamers have been drooling for years for the console. Note, EA Sports did provided support for online leagues a few years back for the PC version of Madden, however, the interest was not high enough for them to support it in future releases.