Guess that’s why they call him a Footballguy.

The playoffs for the first edition of the Industry Insiders League wasn’t even close. After finishing the regular season with the highest scoring average, Footballguys.com writer Sigmund Bloom left the rest of us trying to find him.

In a system that added the total score for each playoff week to that average for the overall score, Bloom wound up winning by 123.37 points — or the same margin that separated second place from ninth.

“The success of Michael Turner, Matt Forte and Steve Slaton allowed me to have a top stable of rbs even though I only spent 1 of my first 4 picks on RB,” Bloom told FSB.com. “I averted possible disasters when Aaron Rodgers played through his shoulder injury and matt cassel got comfortable to preserve randy moss’ value.”

The league — organized by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, open only to members and hosted by RealTime Fantasy Sports — is an effort to foster more of a community feeling among fantasy writers.

“It’s the start of something we want to build, something we want to offer for baseball and football to start and maybe more sports in the future,” said FSWA President Mike Beacom. “It’s something else to help us grow our community — bond writers throughout the fantasy community.”

The league brought together 48 FSWA members in four 12-team division, each of whom fed their top two scorers and two top finishers recordwise into the playoffs. (I said “we” earlier because you’ll see in the standings at the bottom of this post that Team M. Schauf — a name I spent days developing — came in 11th in the postseason.)

“It’s a great chance to compete with the best and meet some of the talent in this burgeoning community,” the champ said.

01. Footballguys — Sigmund Bloom — 1018.44
02. Barracuda Sports — 895.07
03. FSP — Mike Jones — 873.09
04. FFT JFish — 833.20
05. FF Trader — Perkins — 832.90
06. Fantasy Football Times — 814.06
07. CBS Sports — 799.40
08. The Thundering Blurb — 796.70
09. RotoWire — DVR 771.36
10. Fantasy Football Trader — Jon — 765.63
11. Team M. Schauf — 738.16
12. TFS — Yeastie — 715.91
13. Fantasy Insights — Smitty — 715.34
14. The Scores Report — John Paulsen — 712.02
15. THE RotoExpert — 699.25
16. Team Jon Williams — 615.88

(Note: Beacom is also the publisher for SportsBuff.com, a sister site of FSB.com.)

“Who knew fantasy football could change my life?”

That was the rhetorical question asked by Shane Schroeder, a 31-year-old youth corrections officer from Fort Collins, Colo., after he won the first-ever Fantasy Football Open Championship, according to the press release.

Schroeder received his championship jacket and check from FFOC honorary commissioner Jerry Rice on Tuesday after topping the other 14 finalists in Las Vegas.

Behind four-touchdown performances by Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers and Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams, Schroeder’s team — XFACTOR — finished 14 points ahead of its closest competitor in the Vegas bracket. Scores for that championship round combined the team’s average from weeks 1 through 9, average from weeks 10 through 15 and total for Week 16. The next three finishers were separated by fewer than three points total.

“With my winnings, I plan to pay some bills, start a new business and give some to my folks, who have always been so supportive of me,” Schroeder said via the press release.

Check back with FSB.com for more on the FFOC money winners and other prominent fantasy football champions for 2008.

XFACTOR Roster
QB — Philip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers
RB — Michael Turner, DeAngelo Williams, Joseph Addai, Larry Johnson, Jerious Norwood, Sammy Morris
WR — Andre Johnson, Laveranues Coles, Ted Ginn, Anquan Boldin, Ike Hilliard, Kevin Curtis
TE — Tony Gonzalez, Vernon Davis
K – Kris Brown, Mason Crosby
DEF — Tennessee Titans, Green Bay Packers

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– MonsterDraft.com, which launched in April 2006 and is part of the Fantasy Players Network, is up for sale.

– The Fantasy Sports Trade Association has posted the agenda for its upcoming winter business conference online, including the roster of panel participants.

– The Game On! guys at USAToday.com report that Nielsen says the 11.6 million unique visitors that sought fantasy content over the past year could double over the next five years.

– Soccer Lens ranks its top five fantasy “football” (European division) providers for 2008. ESPN makes the cut, while the rest reside across the pond.

Name: Nate Ravitz
Nickname: none
Job title(s): Deputy Editor, Fantasy, ESPN.com
Full-time in fantasy? Yes
Age: 31
Education: B.A. in English, University of Michigan
Family status: Married, no children
Favorite fantasy sport to play: Baseball
Favorite sport to watch: NFL
Favorite team (any sport): N.Y. Jets
All-time favorite athlete: Andre Agassi
Years playing fantasy: 11

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: I joined Total Quality Stats as a part-time sportswriter in 1998.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes: Executive Director, Rototimes.com; Deputy Editor, Fantasy, ESPN.com

Before fantasy, I worked in: N/A

Three questions

1) What was the impetus for the creation of The Roto Times? What took you away from the company that you helped to start?

In mid-1999, my TQStats partners and I started talking about creating a standalone fantasy news and analysis site. We were already doing a lot of the work in the content area of the league manager site, writing player news, updating depth charts and providing a question and answer service. It was a natural move to present those features to a broader audience. As for my departure, it was time to move on and take on new challenges, and ESPN presents a lot of amazing opportunities.

2) Have the duties of your position at ESPN cut into the time you once spent on player evaluation and analysis? Is there anything you miss about previous fantasy gigs?

For the bulk of my career, player evaluation and analysis was the part of my job most visible to the audience, but it was never the whole job. A lot of it was building and managing a team and having a major voice in the broader business and direction of the organization. My role at ESPN is very similar, but with it being a much bigger operation and being a true cross-platform media company, there’s a lot more to do in the “behind-the-scenes” category. I still like discussing and analyzing players, and fortunately, the Fantasy Focus podcasts give me an outlet to do that. As for anything I miss, probably just the people. You can’t work the better part of a decade with a group of people without making some lasting friendships.

3) How have you seen fantasy content and the industry landscape in general change with the adoption of fantasy sports by mainstream media?

Mainstream media coverage is just one part of fantasy sports’ evolution into a mainstream property. We’re now seeing a generation of new players coming into the hobby because their parents played, and that’s very cool. Mainstream media coverage has helped fight the stigma that fantasy is a niche hobby for stat geeks (although I think there’s still more that can be done).

Last March when we did the Baseball Tonight Fantasy Draft special, and you had Matthew Berry and Eric Karabell sitting next to Karl Ravech and Buster Olney … that tells you that fantasy content is ready for prime time. Acceptance of fantasy has been like a snowball effect. Once it started rolling down the hill, it picked up speed and kept expanding. Cris Carter is on Fantasy Football Now every week giving his picks for Streak for the Cash. Darren McFadden, Lance Moore and Tim Hightower were on our podcast this year. We now have pro athletes (active and retired) actively seeking ways to be more involved in fantasy because they recognize the opportunity for exposure. And — whether you agree with the approach or not — the idea that someone like Lori Loughlin (Aunt Becky from Full House) would be a guest on a fantasy podcast would have been unheard of three years ago. With the mainstream acceptance has come new business opportunities.