Joe Levit is the 2009 FSWA fantasy football Industry Insiders League champion. Levit, the founder of FantasyFootballSpeaker.com, overcame bad luck in the regular season and saw his team come out on top in the five-week playoff period. Jared Smola of Fantasy Sharks finished second and Louis Tranquilli of BFD Fantasy Football placed third.

The five-division league was once again hosted by Real Time Sports. Mike Beacom, President and Chairman of the FSWA, said, "Congratulations to Joe. These FSWA Industry Insiders Leagues are a great place for writers to get to know each other."

Levit’s road to success began in the draft. In the first round he had to pick between the best player on his favorite team, Calvin Johnson, and Andre Johnson. Eschewing hometown leanings, he made the right pick and filled out his roster with Ronnie Brown (with Ricky Williams as a fortunate and eventual needed handcuff), Tony Romo, and Dallas Clark. Levit took advantage of the rules that included PPR and the ability to start two tight ends by also picking up Brent Celek. His team got a midseason boost when Levit bid nearly half of his free agent allowance to grab Miles Austin after his 200-yard breakout performance.

During the 11-week regular season of the competition, Levit’s team finished just 5-6 because it had the bad luck of facing 1,602 opponent points (the highest total in the entire league by more than 50 points). Levit never got down because he was happy with his team’s ability "to sometimes score very high totals. I had one week where the SF DEF gave me 39 points, and I ended up with 160+. Another time, with Miles Austin leading the way I totaled 170+. I was proud of never scoring fewer than 100 points in any week."

Levit’s luck turned positive in the five-week playoff period. His team scored 266.8 points over the first two weeks before taking out the heavy lumber in weeks three and four. In week three (NFL Week 14), Levit’s team got nearly 70 points from Johnson and Clark on its way to 174.35 points. Levit said he knew he had a chance to win after week 3, when "my team moved from 14th to fourth place." Week 4 provided another huge 173.2-point performance with five players scoring in the twenties. Levit’s team finished things off with a show of consistency in week five in which nine of his ten players scored 9.7 points or more (with no one over 20 – Shayne Graham’s five points being the one outlier). He watched with some trepidation on Sunday night as Jay Cutler helped Smola’s team get within 15 points of Levit’s total before running out of time.

Levit is an 18-year veteran of fantasy football whose columns and articles have been featured on a variety of sites and magazines including Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, Athlon, Lindy's, and Fantasy Football Pro Forecast magazines. He said, "It's a big win because it was against well-known and intense fantasy owners from across the industry. I highly respect so many of the owners in the competition. Can't wait to draft again next year, though this will always be special."