Profootballtalk.com acquired by NBC

In launching his homegrown website eight years ago, Mike Florio, a West Virginia labor lawyer and sharp-witted football fan, created a way to give his two cents on the NFL.

Now, NBC is going to pay him a lot more than that.

The network is expected to announce today that it has formed a wide-ranging partnership with Florio's Profootballtalk.com -- known as PFT to its legions of readers -- with plans to make it a permanent feature at the top of the NBC Sports site. Terms of the deal have not been announced.

The marriage of an NFL broadcast partner and PFT is an interesting one, because Florio's site has anything but a starched, corporate feel. It keeps, for instance, a running tally of players who have been arrested.

NBC recognizes that unvarnished, unflinching approach as PFT's appeal.

"The sites that are most successful are the ones that have the most unique voices, and I think Mike definitely has one of the most unique voices," said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports and Olympics. "I can't think of another pro football website that has the unique following in such large numbers that Mike does. I'd be a fool if I tried to change that."

Florio's isn't simply a case of a couch potato finding a fortune between the cushions. He has worked hard for this, and PFT has emerged in recent years as a popular resource for fans, media and NFL insiders alike. Florio and his small group of freelance writers collect and rewrite stories from newspapers and websites, but also break their own news, chase down rumors and crack wise on the nation's most popular sports league.

"We look at it as a high-impact media platform," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said. "It's phenomenal what he created, and it's very clear that most people in the business look at it. It has impact."

According to Alexa.com, which tracks Internet traffic patterns, PFT's online audience outnumbers that of most newspapers and sports sites. In March, when interest in the site spiked with the start of free agency, PFT attracted 1.7 million unique visitors and 25 million page views.

Al Michaels, play-by-play man for NBC's "Sunday Night Football," said he checks the site almost daily, and sometimes several times a day.

"Over the past couple of years, he's been as wired into the NFL as anybody," Michaels said. "It's not that he gets every single thing right, but he's clearly got a really good pipeline for information."