Name: Ngozika Nwaneri
Nickname: FWG Wani
Job title(s): founder and president of Amiri Business Solutions Ltd., the parent company to PASPN.net
Full-time in fantasy? Yes
Age: 29
Education: Electrical Engineering & Computer Science MIT Class of 2001
Family status: Single
Favorite fantasy sport to play and why: Fantasy football, because of the close friends and colleagues I play with each year.
Favorite sport to watch: NFL Football
Favorite team (any sport): Detroit Pistons & LIONS!
All-time favorite athlete: Isaiah Thomas
Years playing fantasy: 5 years

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: I got in contact with Jim Enright at Fanball.com when I was looking for a stats provider in order to experiment with the regular season concept of the Mock GM game. Fanball answered the call, and then later told me about the FSTA. From my first conference in February 2008 I knew there was no turning back.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes: N/A

Three questions

1) You’re Mock GM fantasy basketball game is up for three FSTA awards this year. What makes the game new, different and intriguing when compared with what else is on the market?
What makes the Mock GM game new and intriguing is the feeling you get controlling an NBA team as if you are a real NBA GM using the rules of the collective bargaining agreement. There is a sense of ownership and accomplishment when you take over an existing NBA team and their current financial situation and turn that team into a contender. The game allows the user to live out their dreams of managing their favorite NBA team.

What changed from the 2004 origination to the 2008 relaunch?
Each year we add more pieces of the CBA to the game. The biggest change since 2004 was the addition of the regular season (real-time) portion of the game, where mock GMs play out their off-season moves in head-to-head competition with other mock GMs in an NBA-like, 18-week regular season during the NBA regular season.

2) You’ve been into programming and web design since before college. What first got you interested in that area and what were your earliest projects?
I was in a computer science program at the University of Maryland the summer before my senior year in high school, and for our final project we had to create a website. The website I created was the first version of what is today PASPN.net. You can say the project did not stop that summer of 1996 and has continued developing over the next 12 years.

3) Other than the Mock GM game, what other kinds of things fall under the PASPN.net umbrella? What, if anything, do you do on a professional level outside of running PASPN.net?
PASPN.net is an online community for all NBA fans and is a source for content and news for all things related to the NBA and fantasy basketball. Outside of running PASPN.net, I am an enterprise application architect providing consulting services to local businesses in the New York metropolitan area.

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.

Name: Scott Engel
Nickname: “The Brain”
Job title(s): Senior Writer, RotoExperts.com
Full-time in fantasy? Yes, since 1996
Age: 42
Education: B.A. in journalism, Long Island Univeristy’s Brooklyn Campus
Family status: Married to Victoria, 14-year old son, Sean.
Favorite fantasy sport to play: Football
Favorite sport to watch: NFL
Favorite team (any sport): New York Mets
All-time favorite athlete: Bernard King
Years playing fantasy: Since the early ’90s, but much earlier if you count games like Strat-o-Matic.

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: I was hired at CBS Sportsline in the winter of 1996 and joined their fantasy department to help in many areas.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes: Eight years at CBS Sportsline: served as managing editor and senior writer. Four years at ESPN as a fantasy writer, analyst and associate editor. Joined RotoExperts.com in July of 2008. Original executive committee member of the Fantasy Sports Writer’s Association and named 2006 Fantasy Football Writer of the Year.

Three questions

1) How did the fantasy scene of 1996, when you were with CBS Sportsline, compare with that of today? What do you see as the pros and cons of each landscape?

It was so new and exciting then, and I was able to help heavily shape the future of a great company in one of its most important departments. Early on, though, fantasy sports was viewed as an afterthought that didn’t need much attention overall. That thinking changed in a major way over the years, and it was so exciting to be part of the rise from a tiny section on the site to a major component of a successful corporation. Today, I’m back as part of another rising company, looking for that thrilling growth spurt all over again. It’s more challenging today to crack the industry, obviously, but with the right model and people, you can still make a major dent.

2) With so many people analyzing and writing about fantasy football and so much luck factoring into the game itself, what does it take to be a truly good fantasy football analyst?

You must not go by numbers alone and realize there are so many other factors that can contribute to performances — emotions, rivalries, and a lot more. Plus, you must be able to write well and have in-depth knowledge of individual sports. Many potential prospects in the industry do one or the other well, hopefully they learn to combine the two.

3) Why did you leave ESPN, and what drew you to RotoExperts?

Working at ESPN was reaching the top of the mountain in my career. It was like running out of the tunnel in the NFL when I first arrived there. It was a thrilling, unforgettable period in my life. Yet I thirsted for more creativity and avenues to share my experience with a company that wanted to meet the challenges of trying to crack the industry. Nothing ever matched the thrill ride of being with CBS Sportsline from the beginning and being part of that growth process. With RotoExperts, I saw the same kind of visions and people who wanted to scale great heights and believed in themselves. It was great being with ESPN, which was like a rock legend playing stadiums. Yet RotoExperts was the band I saw in a local club and knew they would be famous, and I wanted to get in early on the ride to stardom. In well less than a year, I’ve already seen our audience grow in a major way, and we are ready to rock the fantasy world for years to come.

Let us know what you think of the new format for the personal profiles.

(For those of you who might have arrived late to the FSB party, here’s a chance to get acquainted with our first personal profile subject.)

Who: Dr. Kim Beason

What: Associate professor, park and recreation management, Ole Miss

Founder, Fantasy Sport Research Specialists LLC

Back in 2001, Dr. Beason went searching for studies on fantasy sports consumers, curious to find out why people played and what impact these games had on professional sports. He found the area lacking. Seeing a need for better understanding of this growing phenomenon, he decided to collect the data on his own but was stonewalled in his attempts to connect with companies that could provide customer lists.

That led the Ole Miss professor to trudge out to Las Vegas (not a bad destination if you have to trudge) and pitched his idea to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (then known as the Fantasy Sports Players Association). He offered to match the group’s funding through the first three years of a research project in return for the FSTA encouraging its members to supply consumer targets for the research. A partnership was born.

From the first study in 2002 and 2003, Beason’s pursuit of learning more about those who play fantasy sports quickly grew into popular and valuable research on the fantasy market and the consumer-spending habits of participants. Businesses used the data to court advertisers and more effectively target consumers. Media outlets latched onto the numbers to reflect the growth in this particular entertainment industry. Perhaps most importantly, the study’s valuable findings have driven up inquiries from FSTA constituents, which has in turn enhanced the breadth and depth of the information collected.

“Dr. Beason is the godfather of fantasy sports market research,” says Jeff Thomas, president of the FSTA and CEO of SportsBuff.com, which owns this site. “He took a chance on our small association many years ago, funded many of his own expenses to help kick off our research efforts and is now recognized as the top fantasy sports consumer behavior expert in the world.”

The project grew to the point that in 2006, Beason founded Fantasy Sport Research Specialists LLC “to serve as a clearinghouse for research,” an enterprise he shares with three partners. Although the annual FSTA study - whose sixth set of annual results were presented at the FSTA conference in Chicago on July 8 and 9 - is the company’s primary focus, there are other considerations as well.

“We also explore fantasy sport as a medium to teach children, relationships and differences between the fantasy sports and gaming industries, and fantasy sport in the workplace,” Beason says. “FSRS also conduct specialty-market, branding and product-development research for individual fantasy sport companies.”

Not surprisingly, all of this work stemmed from a career as a fantasy-sports player that began in 1989 with a keeper football league at Ole Miss. Beason quickly learned in his second season not to mix business too closely with pleasure, however, when hosting the league’s draft in a campus classroom nearly got him fired.

“My butt was in a sling for about 2 weeks,” he says. “I had to convince them (they were still skeptical) that what we did wasn’t gambling but a game of skill, and the league fees - 30 bucks - was given to the winner.  I ended up hanging on to my job by promising to never, ever, conduct another fantasy sport event on campus.”

Then again, one might argue that the lesson didn’t really take root.

“Heck, I play and research fantasy sport as a (small) part of my job!” Beason says. “Talk about fortunate.”