As Fantasy football explodes in popularity-there are an estimated 10 million enthusiasts this season-watching the NFL on Sundays has become an uncomfortably active undertaking: diehards shuttle between TV games and feverishly refresh Web browsers, all for fear of missing out on fantasy players´ latest stats. (For the uninitiated: fantasy "owners" manage dream teams of players from around the NFL, then obsessively monitor their weekly offense, which gets computed into league standings.)

Now new digital cable wizardry promises to return Sunday viewing to blissful, sink-back-in-the-recliner sedation. Fantasy Football Tracker lets viewers use a TV remote to key in up to 20 players´ names, enough to keep tabs on your team and a competitor´s in most leagues; their stats are then updated on screen every five minutes in a window or crawl, with special blinking bulletins for TDs. (The service, which is free and requires no special setup, doesn´t compute fantasy point totals, since leagues use different formulas to tally rankings.)

As of now, the service is available in only 56,000 Time Warner Cable homes in Packerland, a.k.a. Green Bay, Wis., but its creator, BIAP Systems, is negotiating with other cable providers for a nationwide rollout. So cheer up, owners with lousy teams: soon you won´t have to do any work to watch your guys struggle.