IT'S NOT THE smell of burning leaves that lets us know another college football season is on the way. Nor is it the sight of students returning to school. It's the preseason football magazines. Long before there's even a hint of fall in the air, the inside scoop is available at your local newsstand.
As early as the second week in July, you can find out who is supposed to win the conferences, play in the bowl games, claim the national championship, and pretty much anything else you want to know - and a lot you probably don't. All you need to do is shell out a few bucks for one of the many football preview publications and sit back and watch it all happen.Or maybe not.
However well-intended, preseason magazines have one inherent problem: they're hardly ever current. They take so much planning, you'd think they were trying to land an astronaut, not put out a magazine. Some publications need their articles turned in as early as March or April in order to make it to the newsstands by July.
All of which causes problems. For example, this week I spent $16.97 for three publications, to get myself educated about the college football season. Before I had received my change back on a twenty I knew something was seriously wrong. No, I hadn't put my underwear on backward. One of the publications - Preview Sports' 1997 College Football - had a picture of BYU running back Ronney Jenkins on the cover.
Fine and dandy, except that Jenkins was suspended in May for honor code violations and won't play a down for the Cougars this year.
As I was walking to my car, I picked up the Athlon Sports college football preview, and there on the front was a nice shot of BYU cornerback Omarr Morgan. Yikes. Morgan, too, was suspended and will miss the first three games.
Preview Sports also had BYU quarterback Riley Jensen tabbed as the WAC's Newcomer of the Year. Which ought to be an accomplishment, considering he transferred to Utah State earlier this month.
If not current, the information they do have in these magazines is exhaustive. You want to know the number of starters returning to Bowling Green's team this year? (OK, pretend you do.) It's all there in The Sporting News college football preview. Want know about Marshall's jump from I-AA to I-A? For $5.99, TSN has the answers. Need the lowdown on New Hampshire's offense? You can find it in the small print on page 172.
This is stuff only a diehard, talk radio-loving, statistic-scribbling, get-a-life fanatic sports fan could love.
Of the three magazines I bought, TSN fared the best, mainly because it had Tennessee's Peyton Manning on the front, rather than a suspended BYU player. However, it did have a color picture of Morgan inside, as well as quotes.
TSN had BYU winning the WAC Mountain Division and No. 26 in the rankings. It picked Colorado State to beat BYU in the WAC championship game, sending the Rams to the Holiday Bowl and BYU to the Copper Bowl. Utah was ranked second in the Mountain Division. TSN was good enough to rank all 112 I-A teams; it rated the Utes 44th. Still, it's better than being ranked 78th, which is where Utah State came in.
Athlon, a longtime fixture among preseason publications, tabbed the Cougars as the No. 25 team in the nation. Here, too, the Utes were left hanging. Not only were they unranked, they were picked third in the Mountain Division.
Athlon went on to laud Cougar coach LaVell Edwards' offensive genius. "Coach LaVell Edwards' ball-control passing game, which actually was the West Coast Offense before someone dreamed up that misnomer, would be strong with a sportswriter at the controls," it says.
So maybe they got a little carried away, but that's what preseason publications are for.
Athlon also had the ill fortune of having color pictures of both Jenkins and Morgan inside.
Of all three publications, Preview Sports was the kindest to teams from Utah. It picked USU wide receiver Nakia Jenkins as a first-team preseason all-America. It ranked BYU 12th in the country and projected a 9-2 season. Though it rated Utah only the fourth-best team in the Mountain Division with a 7-4 overall record, it had Utah State going 7-4 and finishing second in the Big West.
It named Utah running back Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala the preseason WAC Player of the Year. At the same time, TSN chose Fuamatu-Ma'afala as the league's most overrated player. Which was slightly weird. One publication said the guy's a star, the other said he's a bust. But at least they all agreed on one thing: It's going to be a great year for two BYU guys who aren't even going to be playing when the season begins.