Christmas isn’t the only deadline sneaking up on us.

For any fantasy sports writers out there, the Fantasy Sports Writers Association is taking nominations for 2009 awards up until the end of this month (via this online form).

According to FSWA president Mike Beacom, all submissions will be screened by the FSWA’s board of directors, with finalists passing on to an “independent panel of judges.”

Nominees must be members of the FSWA, which you can join before the end of the year to become eligible. The awards presentation — in its sixth year — will take place at next month’s Fantasy Sports Trade Association conference in Las Vegas.

The categories include …

Football Writer of the Year
Football Article of the Year, Web
Football Article of the Year, Print
Football On-Going Series

Baseball Writer of the Year
Baseball Article of the Year, Web
Baseball Article of the Year, Print
Baseball On-Going Series

Basketball Writer of the Year
Hockey Writer of the Year
Golf Writer of the Year
Racing Writer of the Year
College Sports Writer of the Year
Fantasy Humor Article of the Year, Print or Web

Check out FSB.com coverage of last year’s winners:

• Rotowire Dominates FSWA Awards
• The Rest of the FSWA Winners

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– The crew for the upcoming ESPN documentary “Silly Little Game” on the history and growth of the fantasy sports industry will be filming at the FSTA conference in Chicago next week. (Obviously, they heard that FSB.com will be there.)

– The International Cricket Council announced a deal by which STATS becomes the “official data partner” for the governing body of cricket.

– This writeup in The New York Times tells us not only that participants in fantasy golf leagues spend just as much time yelling at the TV and lamenting bad streaks as those who play other fantasy sports, but also that there’s a whole set of frustrations specific to the links.

– New Jersey governor Jon Corzine says he doesn’t think it’s fair that the federal ban on sports gambling applies to some states and not others. His state, of course, appears on the “not” list.

– The new fantasy college football season is also in full swing over at FantasyCollegeBlitz.com.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

On its own, the Kodak Challenge might bring a few golf fans to a brand with which they’re probably already familiar. The company, however, has obviously realized that creating a fantasy game will allow some of those fans to spend much more time with that brand.

The Challenge is a series of 30 holes in various PGA Tour events throughout the season. The golfer who tallies the lowest combined score on his best 18 of those 30 holes wins $1 million at the end of the year.

The concept is interesting, and anything that rewards $1 million is bound to garner some attention. It’s doubtful, however, that pro golfers will be focusing any differently on those holes or that viewers will follow along simply to see how everyone fares on the 13th hole at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial (the first event in the fantasy game).

Add Kodak Challenge Fantasy Pick ‘Em, though, and you create an audience that is suddenly quite interested in what happens on those specific holes and makes repeated visits to your site to check the standings.

The Pick ‘Em game is free to play and simply requires users to pick a foursome each week for a chance at weekly and full-year prizes. Clearly, it’s not going to draw an enormous following, but people will play. Just look at what fantasy did for the FLW Outdoors fishing tour last year. One trip to the game’s site, and it’s impossible not to end up in the middle of a Kodak ad.

“Golf fans everywhere have been asking for a way to get involved in the Kodak Challenge,” Eastman Kodak chief marketing officer and vice president Jeffrey Hayzlett said in the release. “We’re responding with a game that’s easy to understand and fun to play.”

Obviously, there’s some typical press-release hyperbole at work there, but the key phrase is “get involved.” The fantasy game engages consumers with the Kodak brand, rather than merely telling them about it once a weekend. As we’ve noted here before, that fantasy consumer is one worth chasing.

It would be surprising if more big brands don’t start taking similar initiatives.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– FantasyRacer.com has launched the first season of its fantasy MotoGP salary-cap game.

– If an application for iPhone and iPod Touch is going to cost $10 (rather than the more typical lower single-digit numbers), it’s going to have to be pretty involved. Judging by this TMCnet review, MLB.com At Bat 2009 certainly seems to be. I think we all know that fantasy baseball players are just the kind of “fanatics” the writer is describing.

– The main golf story of the first quarter of 2009 was obviously Tiger Woods’ return to the links, and that’s likely the main reason that PGATour.com enjoyed strong traffic for those three months. For what it’s worth, though, the time also coincided with the first quarter of the site’s partnership with Yahoo’s fantasy golf game.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com.