The Fantasy Sports Writers Association is accepting nominations through the end of the year for its fifth annual writing awards.

The awards encompass football, baseball, basketball, hockey, auto racing, golf and now college sports. The FSWA selects a writer of the year in each of those sports and also presents several awards for top articles and running features in the premier fantasy fields of football and baseball.

This is the first year that the FSWA has included college sports in the list. According to FSWA president Mike Beacom, the recent growth of fantasy college sports helped to spur increased interest in the FSWA that was already evident last year at awards time.

“The 2007 FSWA Awards witnessed a record number of nominations and we are confident this year we will top that mark,” Beacom wrote in the association’s November newsletter, which announced the nomination period. “The FSWA welcomed close to 100 new members during the course of the past year.”

Writers must be enrolled in the FSWA to nominate candidates or win an award. Author names and affiliations are removed for the judging process, and winners are ultimately determined by independent college journalism professors, according to the FSWA. Those interesting in submitting nominations can use the online form any time before the end of the year. Anyone submitting for Magazine of the Year in baseball or football should mail three copies of the publication to the following address:

FSWA
c/o Mike Beacom
P,O, Box 296
Amherst, WI 54406

Awards will be presented at the 2009 Fantasy Sports Trade Association winter business conference in Florida on Jan. 27-28. Last year’s winners included Rotoworld’s Gregg Rosenthal for top football writer, Rotowire’s Jeff Erickson for top baseball writer, Rotowire’s Andre’ Snellings for basketball, Rotowire’s Janet Eagleson for hockey, ESPN’s Christopher Harris for auto racing and CBS Sports’ Ross Davenport for golf.

RotoExperts has signed on to sponsor the Fantasy Sports Trade Association winter business conference.

“RotoExperts is excited about our industry’s direction and the strategic partnerships we’ve developed in such a short period of time,” says Ben Ice, founder of RotoExperts. “Our goal in 2009 is to continue to establish relationships within the industry, and this is a great opportunity to get in front of them.”

The conference is set for January 27 and 28 in St. Pete’s Beach, Fla., and will include the presentation of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association annual awards.

Company: Dobber Sports
Launched: 2005
Sites: DobberHockey.com, DobberBaseball.com

It’s the dream of many a fantasy writer who enters the industry. He (or she) begins simply writing about his favorite sport and eventually fares well enough to go out on his own and launch a site that allows him to do it for a living.

The dream came true for Darryl Dobbs back in 2005.

Dobbs started playing fantasy hockey at age 15 back in 1989. In 2001, the Canadian began writing about the sport of his home country, and from 2002 he was a key component of the fantasy coverage for The Hockey News. By 2005, Dobbs was branching out to his own site, though it wasn’t necessarily by plan.

Dobbs says that THN had to lay off a significant portion of its staff in 2005 because of the NHL lockout than canceled the 2004-05 season. The group that left included the magazine’s webmaster, and the replacement didn’t come with quite the same amount of knowledge his predecessor carried. The interim poster of content didn’t know how to get Dobbs’ player rankings up on the site, so Dobbs began posting them on a separate webpage and linking from his THN offerings.

“Within a month, I was archiving my THN articles on this webpage and occasionally throwing my ‘ramblings’ on it,” Dobbs tells FSB.com, referring to a daily roundup of his hockey observations. “It started growing and Steve Hulford from FSN.ca and PoolExpert.com advised me to get a domain name. I chose DobberHockey.com, and things just really grew from there.”

Dobbs, a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, estimates that the site cost him a whopping $20 in startup fees — $10 for the domain name and $10 more for the host. In 2006, he launched a redesign of the site (another followed in February 2007), and two months later it became a full-time gig.

“I really kept costs down because I quit my day job between the two re-launches,” Dobbs says. “Because of the passion of this industry, there are a lot of good people willing to help, not for the money, but because they love it. ”

DobberHockey, which generates revenue solely from advertising and sales of its draft kit, supports only Dobbs at this point, and even he hasn’t been sustained by it all along. He says things have been improving on that front, though.

“I still have to freelance on the side — for The Hockey News, Pool Expert and for the Forecaster,” Dobbs says. “With this year’s growth I could probably do away with freelancing now, but I enjoy it. Until this year, I needed the other gigs.”

The site carries a roster of other part-time contributors who produce a range of regular content. The centerpiece remains the player rankings that were once the near-accidental base on which the whole venture was eventually built.

Dobbs posts rankings of the top 300 fantasy hockey players, top 100 goaltenders, top 100 defensemen and top 200 prospects, and he updates each list once a month throughout the year (including the off-season). Other features include the “ramblings” — “haven’t missed a day since it became full time,” Dobbs says — and forums, which Dobbs lauds for the friendly nature of the users. He has also recently lauched DobberBaseball.com and says he’d like to move into golf next and nail down a regular biweekly schedule for his radio show, “Dobber Nation.”

That might not be all that’s in the works, but any other possibilities are known only by one person at this point.

“I have a couple of other thoughts in mind that I’ll keep secret for now,” Dobbs says.

The Fantasy Sports Writers Association announced Monday that it has added longtime football writer Michael Fabiano to its board of directors. Fabiano, who previously wrote for CBS Sportsline and has been syndicated nationally, currently serves as the primary face and voice of the NFL’s fantasy content via NFL.com and the NFL Network.

“We feel fortunate to have Michael Fabiano join us,” FSWA president and chairman Mike Beacom said. “He has long been one of the industry’s most respected and recognizable fantasy writers, and we’re confident he will offer a great deal to our organization and its 200-plus members.”

The FSWA was created in 2004 and seeks to connect writers throughout the fantasy sports industry and recognize their contributions. Beacom said the organization is reviewing applicants to fill one more board position.