Let’s say you’re an NFL player competing in a fantasy league with six fellow pros and some guy who won a contest. How early would you draft yourself? Would you pass because of value or conflict of interest?

In the 2009 edition of the NFL Players fantasy league, three of the seven NFL competitors drafted themselves. Carolina running back DeAngelo Williams joined his own team with the final pick of Round 1 in the eight-team collection. Dallas receiver Roy Williams added himself in the fifth round, three rounds after selecting former teammate Calvin Johnson as his No. 1 receiver. Jets running back Leon Washington plucked himself from the board in Round 11, just two rounds from the end.

Chicago running back Matt Forte never got the chance to lead his own team, as Miami back Ronnie Brown snapped him up a pick earlier in the first round. Forte did draft a league-high three teammates, however, choosing QB Jay Cutler in the fifth round, TE Greg Olsen in the sixth and fantasy leaguemate Robbie Gould in the eighth. Gould might have made the draft’s smartest pick by selecting the Bears defense. That should help to protect from at least some of the harassment that might befall other kickers.

In perhaps the ultimate warning sign against his own fantasy value in 2009, Brown passed on himself through four rounds before Roy Williams finally selected him. Houston linebacker and 2008 league champion Cato June couldn’t draft himself because of the format but also had no interest in the Texans defense or any of his new teammates, apparently.

The lone non-football player in the league, contest winner Dave Stasinski, had to like drafting with a group that allowed him to make selections such as Washington running back Clinton Portis in Round 6 and Buffalo back Marshawn Lynch in the 13th and final round.

The full draft can be viewed at NFLPlayers.com via the link provided above.

No matter what you think of Matt Forte’s fantasy prospects for the coming season, he seems excited for it to get here.

The Bears’ second-year running back will be one of seven NFLers in this year’s incarnation of the fantasy competition put on by NFL Players, the marketing and business arm of the players association.

“I plan on going all-in,” Forte said in an interview with Mark Donnelly of NFLPlayers.com. “This is my first time so I have to get the full experience. I think I have a lot of spare time to do some things. I plan on doing all that fantasy stuff after practice. I think I’m going to get hooked and start playing every year.”

Forte said he got some pointers from friend and Jacksonville running back Maurice Jones-Drew, whom he said plays “a lot” of fantasy football. Forte must be catching on quickly, though, because he also said he doesn’t trust the advice of a fellow fantasy player. (Jones-Drew competed in the 2008 edition.)

The competition pits seven football players — Ronnie Brown (Miami), Robbie Gould (Chicago), Leon Washington (N.Y. Jets), DeAngelo Williams (Carolina), Roy Williams (Dallas) and 2008 champ Cato June (Houston), along with Forte — and one contest winner against each other. This is the first time in the three years of the production that a non-NFL participant has been welcomed.

Roy Williams happens to be a fantasy veteran, though he’ll have to hope he learned his lesson last time. The receiver finished last in the NFL Players league’s inaugural season in 2007.

“Consistency is the key and I didn’t have it,” Williams said of his loss, in an interview with NFLPlayers.com. “It’s very hard to put your lineup together when you’re trying to guess and sometimes I caught myself guessing a lot of weeks.”

(If he’s looking for consistency, let’s hope he’s not relying on himself at receiver.)

It’s nice that this event gives a taste of the fantasy game to actual players, who might otherwise just know fantasy as the only thing that fans seem to ask them about these days. We’ll try to keep an eye on who comes out on top this time around.

How close was the championship matchup in your league with your buddies? Odds are it wasn’t any closer than the final margin in the World Championship of Fantasy Football.

Poochie Bennish’s Fantasy Papa edged Robbie Brown’s Ray Ray’s Revenge by a mere .85 of a point. One more reception by Bears running back Matt Forte in the season’s final Monday night affair, and the final two would have been reversed.

Although most pay leagues include a significant difference between the payouts to the first- and second-place finishers, this tight race meant a gap of $240,000. The winner took home $300,000. (For the mathematically impaired: The runner-up earned $60,000.)

Of course, both players come away with a hefty return on their investments. The rest of us can merely take heart a bit in the fact that even at the highest levels of our fantasy competitions, among the best-prepared competitors, there’s still room for some luck.

Guess that’s why they call him a Footballguy.

The playoffs for the first edition of the Industry Insiders League wasn’t even close. After finishing the regular season with the highest scoring average, Footballguys.com writer Sigmund Bloom left the rest of us trying to find him.

In a system that added the total score for each playoff week to that average for the overall score, Bloom wound up winning by 123.37 points — or the same margin that separated second place from ninth.

“The success of Michael Turner, Matt Forte and Steve Slaton allowed me to have a top stable of rbs even though I only spent 1 of my first 4 picks on RB,” Bloom told FSB.com. “I averted possible disasters when Aaron Rodgers played through his shoulder injury and matt cassel got comfortable to preserve randy moss’ value.”

The league — organized by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, open only to members and hosted by RealTime Fantasy Sports — is an effort to foster more of a community feeling among fantasy writers.

“It’s the start of something we want to build, something we want to offer for baseball and football to start and maybe more sports in the future,” said FSWA President Mike Beacom. “It’s something else to help us grow our community — bond writers throughout the fantasy community.”

The league brought together 48 FSWA members in four 12-team division, each of whom fed their top two scorers and two top finishers recordwise into the playoffs. (I said “we” earlier because you’ll see in the standings at the bottom of this post that Team M. Schauf — a name I spent days developing — came in 11th in the postseason.)

“It’s a great chance to compete with the best and meet some of the talent in this burgeoning community,” the champ said.

01. Footballguys — Sigmund Bloom — 1018.44
02. Barracuda Sports — 895.07
03. FSP — Mike Jones — 873.09
04. FFT JFish — 833.20
05. FF Trader — Perkins — 832.90
06. Fantasy Football Times — 814.06
07. CBS Sports — 799.40
08. The Thundering Blurb — 796.70
09. RotoWire — DVR 771.36
10. Fantasy Football Trader — Jon — 765.63
11. Team M. Schauf — 738.16
12. TFS — Yeastie — 715.91
13. Fantasy Insights — Smitty — 715.34
14. The Scores Report — John Paulsen — 712.02
15. THE RotoExpert — 699.25
16. Team Jon Williams — 615.88

(Note: Beacom is also the publisher for SportsBuff.com, a sister site of FSB.com.)