The sixth year of the FSWA awards again drew a record number of submissions.

Fantasy Sports Writers Association president Mike Beacom said that the group’s board of directors had nearly 1,000 articles to pore over in recent weeks to pare down to the list of finalists announced today that were passed along to the two independent judges.

We’ll get into some of the specific points about this year’s group of contenders, but for now, here’s the full list of finalists. Winners will be announced at the Fantasy Sports Trade Association conference Jan. 26-27 in Las Vegas.

Best Fantasy Football Publication
Fantasy Football Index
Pro Football Weekly/Yahoo!
RotoWire

Best Online Football Article
Dalton Del Don, RotoWire
Jeff Stotts, RotoWire
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire

Best Football Print Article
Michael Blunda, Pro Football Weekly
Ted Carlson, Fanball
Ben Ice, Fantasy Football Pro Forecast

Best Football Series
Tristan Cockcroft, ESPN
Adam Levitan, RotoWorld
Jeff Stotts, RotoWire

Football Writer of the Year
Ryan Bonini, KFFL
Brad Evans, Yahoo!
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire

Best Fantasy Baseball Publication
Fanball
Fantasy Baseball Index
RotoWire

Best Online Baseball Article
John Rakowski, Sports Grumblings
David Regan, RotoWire
Scott White, CBS Sports

Best Baseball Print Article
James Benard, RotoWire
Will Carroll, RotoWire
Brent Hershey, USA Today Sports Weekly

Best Baseball Series
Jason Grey, ESPN
David Regan, RotoWire
Mark Strausberg, RotoExperts

Baseball Writer of the Year
David Regan, RotoWire
Derek VanRiper, RotoWire
Scott White, CBS Sports

Basketball Writer of the Year
Cory Elfrink, Fanball
Tom Lorenzo, RotoExperts
Andre Snellings, RotoWire

College Sports Writer of the Year
John Baker, RapidDraft
Brad Evans, Yahoo!
Michael Hurcomb, CBS Sports

Golf Writer of the Year
Rob Bolton, RotoWorld
John McNamara, RotoWire
Scott Pianowski, Yahoo!

Hockey Writer of the Year
Sean Allen, ESPN
Rocky Bonanno, NHL.com
Scott Pianowski, Yahoo!

Racing Writer of the Year
Scott Engel, RotoExperts
Brian Polking, Fanball
Mark Taylor, RotoWire

Best Humor Article
Ladd Biro, Sporting News
Paul Bourdett, RotoExperts
Mike Gilbert, RotoExperts

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.

– 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.

Company: Fanball
Launched: 1993
Site: www.fanball.com

Back in 1993, there wasn’t a whole lot in the way of fantasy advice on the market. Paul Charchian and Rob Phythian set out to change that.

“There was no information of any kind available once the season started,” Charchian told FSB.com. “We wanted to get something out there.”

Something was Fantasy Football Weekly, which hit Minneapolis newsstands and promptly outsold Sports Illustrated locally. The instant success quickly led an expansion of the business and in 1998, Fanball hit the Internet.

Unfortunately, the growth might have come a bit too quickly, as Fanball ran into serious trouble at the end of the decade and was forced to file for bankruptcy protection in 2000.

“We spent our money too fast, flamed out and filed Chapter 11 like others caught in the dot-com boom,” Phythian told the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune back in 2004. “Fortunately, we were saved by some angel investors.”

The group of investors included the original co-founders, and the group scaled down the plan a little bit and brought the company back around.

“There’s a real business here, albeit smaller than everyone else had been hoping for,” then-CEO John Ehlert told the Fantasy Sports Informant in 2002, “and with some resources and dedication to business basics we can grow it steadily rather than astronomically.”

The altered path worked out, and today Fanball.com is a comprehensive fantasy sports site — operating as part of FUN Technologies Inc. — that offers a variety of games and original content in six sports, namely baseball, football, basketball, hockey, golf and NASCAR.

“We feel we offer everything possible for both the casual and advanced fantasy consumer,” says Ryan Houston, Fanball’s senior vice president for business development and publisher. “We like to say ‘Play it all at Fanball,’ and that statement is completely accurate.”

Houston touts more than 50 games in the Fanball library, including league commissioner and draft-and-play offerings in each of the four traditional major sports, as well as “challenge games” in each of the six sports mentioned above. That area of the site was enhanced by the 2006 purchase of CDM Sports, which has been running games such as salary-cap contests since 1992, and its integration with Fanball under the umbrella of Fun Technologies.

“We are quite pleased with how quickly CDM was able to consolidate all the Fanball products into one property,” Houston tells FSB. “The strength of CDM was in-game play and development, and that continues today.”

The melding of Fanball and CDM created a single operation in St. Louis with about 50 staffers handling the game applications and churning out the fantasy content. Among the recent developments have been the platform for the Olympics quick-pick game presented by NBC Sports for the Games in August, a fantasy football application for the iPhone that launched at the beginning of the season and an expansion of Owner’s Edge (Fanball’s proprietary service that offers fantasy news, information and advice). The company’s holdings also include TQ Stats, Roto Times and FantasyCup.com, and Houston says that there is interest in adding to the portfolio.

“The recent launch of our first iPhone application and fantasy video segment gives you a glimmer of what our technology group is capable of producing, and we look forward to the challenges, innovation and growth that are ahead,” he says.