A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– You know it’s coming. The gap between the end of football season and the beginning of baseball presents a lull for many a fantasy player. The Wall Street Journal’s Nando Di Fino offers some ways to feed your fantasy hunger before Mike Hampton’s next failed comeback. There are plenty of intriguing options, but I feel compelled to say don’t overlook the “spending time with your family” plan. They miss you.

– Meet Yossi Tamari, an Israeli software engineer who can’t get enough fantasy NBA.

The Fantasy Sports Writers Association is accepting nominations through the end of the year for its fifth annual writing awards.

The awards encompass football, baseball, basketball, hockey, auto racing, golf and now college sports. The FSWA selects a writer of the year in each of those sports and also presents several awards for top articles and running features in the premier fantasy fields of football and baseball.

This is the first year that the FSWA has included college sports in the list. According to FSWA president Mike Beacom, the recent growth of fantasy college sports helped to spur increased interest in the FSWA that was already evident last year at awards time.

“The 2007 FSWA Awards witnessed a record number of nominations and we are confident this year we will top that mark,” Beacom wrote in the association’s November newsletter, which announced the nomination period. “The FSWA welcomed close to 100 new members during the course of the past year.”

Writers must be enrolled in the FSWA to nominate candidates or win an award. Author names and affiliations are removed for the judging process, and winners are ultimately determined by independent college journalism professors, according to the FSWA. Those interesting in submitting nominations can use the online form any time before the end of the year. Anyone submitting for Magazine of the Year in baseball or football should mail three copies of the publication to the following address:

FSWA
c/o Mike Beacom
P,O, Box 296
Amherst, WI 54406

Awards will be presented at the 2009 Fantasy Sports Trade Association winter business conference in Florida on Jan. 27-28. Last year’s winners included Rotoworld’s Gregg Rosenthal for top football writer, Rotowire’s Jeff Erickson for top baseball writer, Rotowire’s Andre’ Snellings for basketball, Rotowire’s Janet Eagleson for hockey, ESPN’s Christopher Harris for auto racing and CBS Sports’ Ross Davenport for golf.

STATS LLC announced Wednesday the acquisition of Israeli technology-development company SportVU, a move it says will add quite a bit to STATS’ offerings.

Most notably, SportVU collects positioning data on all actors and objects involved in an athletic contest and applies algorithms to produce helpful tools such as speed profiles and measurements of athletes’ fatigue. We’ve all heard about competitors who play faster than their 40-yard dash times, but this purports to be the first actual measure of such a phenonmenon.

For scouts and coaches that will have access to this data, it could mean more accurate and evolving player evaluations and should assist in game planning. Observers of the sports — including fantasy sports analysts — will have new ways to look at performance and different aspects to factor in when projecting future production.

STATS not only views the new capabilities as enhancing the product delivered to its customers in sports leagues and sports media, but also sees new revenue opportunities. Sponsors, for example, could pay to attach their brand to on-screen graphics that display the new measurements.

“This is a strategic initiative designed to create new business opportunities and greatly expand existing partnerships in all sectors of our business across the globe,” STATS CEO Gary Walrath said in the press release. “SportVU’s unique technologies bring new dimensions that enhance the sports experience for fans, while creating compelling new revenue platforms for our clients.”

Election watchers might have seen SportVU’s technology at work on CNN when an interview subject was virtually transported into the broadcast studio to speak with Wolf Blitzer. The company was founded in 2005, and all “key principals” will take on roles under the broadened STATS umbrella, according to the release.