A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– What has Gary Busey been up to on the rare occasion he steps away from Twitter? He got a new name, a new law degree and is helping professional athletes collect on fees they haven’t been receiving from us fantasy owners … all in the name of selling Vitamin Water. Meet Norman Tugwater.

– The most recent Fantasy Sports Writers Association newsletter announced the plan for “launching a new website that focuses on fantasy football in a unique and innovative way.” In the words of FSWA president Mike Beacom, “This is not your typical fantasy football site but one that has potential to change the fantasy football landscape.” Interested writers with daily availability to produce content throughout the season can contact jsf1111@gmail.com (Josh).

– Pro Football Focus is looking for “stat-oriented” writers to add to its recently built-out fantasy section, especially those with the ability to cover individual defensive players. Writers will get access to PFF’s player stats and ratings data, which requires a subscription otherwise.

– World Fantasy Games is on the lookout for fantasy hockey and fantasy basketball folks looking to make their way into the industry. Contact some dude named Matt Schauf if you’re interested.

– Just as it has for the past couple of seasons in football, the FSWA will ask its membership this year to vote on the top fantasy performers in baseball. The ballot will be put together between now and the end of the season, with the winners to be announced during the World Series.

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

Company: FJ Fantasy Sports
Launch date: May 2002
Became full-time operation: 2004

Even if you weren’t aware of FJ Fantasy Sports, you’ve probably seen their products. Those big cardboard displays with the multi-colored player stickers standing at the center at events such as the WCOFF and FSTA conferences? You’re looking at FJ. Co-founder Jeff Peters, who left a career in corrugated cardboard for another in decorating it with player names, took some time recently to share his company’s story with FSB.com

1. Let’s start at an obvious point: What does FJ stand for?

FJ is pig Latin for Jeff. When I was a kid, my best friend and I talked in pig Latin so his mother couldn’t figure out what kind of devious plans we were hatching. He was Ike-May and I was Eff-Jay. When it came time to choose a business name, Mike and I were sitting around trying to figure out a name, and this memory came back to us. It instantly became the business name.

2. Your site says that the boards came about when Mrs. Peters was charged with creating a grid for a baseball draft in 2002. What inspired her to create the board that launched the business, and what did the league like about it?

I knew she was a good artist, so I asked her to make me a grid for our upcoming baseball draft. The previous year we used an easel, but it was too small for anyone to see. So I asked her to make me a large grid, about 5 feet by 5 feet. I brought this piece of white corrugated home from work, and she decorated it beautifully with our league name and all the team names. We still have this “original” draft board.

3. You’ve been playing fantasy sports since 1990. What were those leagues doing for their drafts those first 12 years before requesting the board?

Back in 1990, during my first football draft, we used two gigantic pieces of brown corrugated. They were about 10 feet wide by 8 feet high. We had index cards with all the player names on them. All the cards were posted on one board (with push pins), and the grid was on the other. You’ve got to remember, we all worked at a corrugated box plant, so getting our “draft board” was easy!

4. How quickly did you envision a business sprouting from this board?

My wife, Pam, first brought the idea up. We had no idea if anything like this existed. We started checking ads in fantasy magazines and looking online to see if anyone made these. We found a few companies that did paper sheets. We knew that we had the resources to make a standup corrugated display that would not require any wall space. So we designed a draft board for 14 teams and 23 rounds, took a chance and invested some of our own money into the business and started with a small production run.

5. Describe the background in corrugated cardboard and the artistic skills that combined to make this happen. What has each meant to the creation (and sustainability) of FJ Fantasy Sports?

My background in selling corrugated for 30 years gave me the knowledge of what was possible to design and make out of corrugated. The company I worked for had some of the top designers in the industry, so I tapped their skill and knowledge, gave them the parameters of what I was trying to do and let them come up with the design. Everything was designed around UPS size limitations for shipping packages. Pam drew the design for the first FJ draft board grid, and we have stayed with it. It is a unique grid that allows us to use four different-sized labels on the same draft board.

6. How did you go about getting the business rolling back in 2002? How did you find that first round of customers (or how did they find you)?

When we started in May of 2002, it was already too late to buy any magazine ads for that football season. So we concentrated on trying to get our website recognized on the Internet. This is a tricky process when starting out, and we made a lot of mistakes. But we eventually got placement on Google, and that’s basically the only search engine you need to be on, since most others are fed by Google. In 2003, we bought some ads in fantasy magazines, and the business started to take off. But the biggest and best thing that happened to us was being found by Lenny Pappano, an original co-founder of the World Championship of Fantasy Football. Lenny needed a free-standing draft board for his Las Vegas tournament in 2003, and we had the makings of what he needed. He prodded us to develop the “Jumbo” board, and we ended up getting great exposure through his tournament.

7. What steps did you take to grow the business from there, and how quickly did growth come about?

Growth came quickly the first few years. We tried to introduce new products and features every year, such as adding 10-, 12-, and 16-team draft boards to our menu. We also added “Stands,” which turn the draft boards into 30-rounders. In addition, we added four more label sizes to the one that we started out with. So we now have a draft board for almost any size and type of draft.

8. The Internet had already made fantasy gaming so much easier by the time FJ was launched. What do you think still made your product so appealing to this marketplace? How has business changed in recent years with the array of fantasy-targeted products constantly widening?

The appeal of the FJ draft boards is that you don’t need a big wall to hang a paper sheet on. You can use our board anywhere in a room, and we have a label size that can be read from up to 35 feet away. This was ideal for the WCOFF tournament, and all the other tournaments picked up on it. Soon, all their customers wanted a draft board like they used at their high-stakes tournaments, and we were the only ones doing this. Because we do all the tournaments, our player label lists are the most extensive in the industry by far. We do not want to be embarrassed at a high-stakes tournament by having a lot of write-ins. The final “slice” of our success pie is customer service. Hundreds of our customers know us personally, and thousands more know us from talking on the phone. And they know they can trust us to do things quickly and correctly.

9. How have your products and your catalog changed to fit demand over the life of the business?

As mentioned (earlier), we added different sizes of draft boards, which would accommodate almost any league sizes. We started with a 14-team, 23-round board. Now we can handle any number of teams 10 or beyond, and up to 32 rounds. And most can be had in 5 different label sizes. So there is something for every league. We have added ancillary products such as draft clocks and Personal Draftlogs, tools to help in conducting a fantasy draft. We also branched out from the original football-baseball idea to now include hockey and basketball.

10. Any new directions that you plan to go or envision coming into play in the near future?

We constantly look for new ideas and ways to make things better for our customers, but we feel that we are in sort of a “mature” stage of our business evolution. We have kicked around the NASCAR idea for years but just can’t seem to get a handle on what to do with it.

For those watching from the outside, the Sirius XM fantasy sports channel might have seemed to develop somewhat slowly and quietly — perhaps even to the point that it caught some by surprise. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision, however.

“It’s been a great passion of mine and Matt Deutsch’s forever,” Steve Cohen, Sirius XM’s senior VP of sports programming told FSB.com in an interview recently. “We’ve been talking about (a channel) for several years.”

Deutsch is the new channel’s programming director, and Cohen said the two of them finally got approval from their bosses and set to work on a lineup. The first two shows came easily. The XM side of the company had a history with RotoWire, dating back to the latter’s four-year run XM’s MLB Home Plate channel, which made that an easy early call.

On the Sirius side, John Hansen of FantasyGuru.com and Adam Caplan of Scout.com had a presence on the NFL channel. Cohen said that the success of Hansen’s show helped display the desire for fantasy sports programming, as the audience reacted strongly to the expansion from one episode a week to two. That served as a sure sign that Sirius XM had to “keep building on this.”

“If you’re a good sports programmer, you’re listening to your subscribers and your listeners,” Cohen said. “You knew there was a hunger for more.”

So Fantasy Sports Radio (Channel 147 on XM, 211 on Sirius for subscribers to “Best of XM” package) locked in RotoWire and moved Hansen over. Cohen also said that he began talking with fantasy-industry veteran Scott Engel back in the fall about a NASCAR show, and a relationship dating back more than 20 years easily led to a deal. Other notable names and outlets (as we’ve reported here before) joined a roster that, interestingly, also includes former athletes and a GM-turned-analyst.

Steve Phillips, who used to run the Mets’ front office before joining ESPN’s baseball crew, opened a nightly show with the channel’s launch. As the seasons change, the lineup will also include former NBA guard Dennis Scott and former NHL star Jeremy Roenick.

Of course, the biggest coup on that front when you combine name recognition and popularity of the sport, is Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew. Not only is he among the league’s top young running backs, but Jones-Drew is a favorite of fantasy players simply for his production and an athlete well-known for “getting” fantasy.

“Maurice has been a mainstay on NFL radio since he was coming out of UCLA,” Cohen said, citing a rookie diary that the former Bruin did for Sirius as a new pro. “We only wanted one player to do a fantasy football show for us. When the opportunity came up, I called his representative. It’s going to be something that really hasn’t been done before.”

A natural skepticism often creeps for fantasy players when athletes, celebrities and/or “traditional” analysts try to talk fantasy. Cohen, however, is a fantasy veteran himself, having served as the “Injury Guru” on the original staff of fantasy writers for ESPN.com back in the 1990s and contributing analysis and advice in a variety of other ways. He calls the contributions of these former players and scouts “invaluable.”

“Fantasy isn’t far from reality,” Cohen said. “These guys are students of the game.”

In the case of Phillips, Cohen points out that the former front-office man spent years studying prospects (and also been playing fantasy baseball for a while). With Roenick, “all he’s doing is watching hockey.”
Cohen says it’s generally easier for such longtime players as Roenick and Scott to pick up little details about the players such as who’s slowing down or who’s taking plays off.

Additionally, these guys won’t be left on their own. Sirius XM hasn’t announced the full lineup of co-hosts, but those analysts will be paired with fantasy folks.

As for what else lies ahead, Cohen said much of that will depend on subscriber demand. He did say that they put a premium on fantasy outlets that could change with the seasons, addressing the sports in view rather than sticking to one area year-round.

That said, anyone in the fantasy sports industry knows that consumers — at least a portion of the market, and generally the serious portion that spends some money — have come to expect info and analysis in and out of season. It’s easy to imagine the Fantasy Guru show running its football talk all year, and there’s plenty of room for further year-round programming in fantasy football and baseball. (Basketball and hockey don’t bring nearly as big an audience.)

In addition to the Times Square mock draft event scheduled for Wednesday, the channel also plans to go heavy with mocks as football season approaches, involving various hosts and perhaps listeners as well.

Here’s guessing that Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio has no trouble finding a big enough audience. This kind of treatment was overdue for a growing and influential consumer base, and outside of BlogTalkRadio’s Fantasy Sports Channel, fantasy has seemed relatively ignored on the radio.

The lineup began with the addition of RotoWire back in March, but it wasn’t until today that SIRIUS XM officially announced its complete new fantasy sports channel.

“We’ve created a unique destination for fantasy sports fans,” president and chief content officer Scott Greenstein said in the press release. “Our listeners get live play-by-play … that allows them to follow all their fantasy players or teams in real time. Now they have a dedicated fantasy sports channel that they can tune into 24 hours a day.”

The channel — 147 on XM, 211 on SIRIUS — features a list of prominent fantasy companies and veteran writers. Perhaps more interesting, though, is that the lineup will include some current and former athletes and a former general manager.

Starting in August, Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew is scheduled to host a Friday night fantasy football show (7 to 9 p.m.). Jones-Drew has clearly been a leader among athletes in “getting” fantasy, going so far as to say his infamous kneel down against the Jets last year cost his own fantasy team a victory. (Related: What will his coach have to say, though?)

Before that, former Mets general manager and ESPN analyst Steve Phillips will begin co-hosting a fantasy baseball show (with Jeff Rickard) weeknights from 8 to 11. In addition, basketball season will bring a weekly show for that sport, featuring former NBA guard Dennis Scott as an analyst and fantasy industry veteran Scott Engel as host. Hockey season will bring Jeremy Roenick as a host for a fantasy hockey show. Engel will also host a weekly fantasy golf show with Golf.com founder Alex Miceli.

“To complement the in-depth and informative fantasy talk from the industry’s experts, listeners will hear from all kinds of personalities, from actors and musicians in addition to current and former athletes, all with real fantasy sports knowledge,” Greenstein said in the release. “We will present a daily listening experience that is informative, and always engaging and entertaining.”

In addition to the daily (weekdays) RotoWire show — and previously reported slots for Fanball and Fantasy Pros 911 — the SIRIUS XM fantasy lineup will include a football show featuring FantasyGuru.com’s John Hansen and Scout.com’s Adam Caplan, a RotoExperts show during morning drive time and a Friday night entry from The Fantasy Consultant (Nathan Zegura).

Check out the full announced lineup here.