Most people have the college football magazine that they love.  This can be seen in some of the results of my favorite college football magazine poll.  Some are die hard Phil Steele fans.  Others, it seems, are more of a Street and Smith fan (which is now, of course, just Sporting News).  Regardless, I set out to waste as much time as possible to flip through the four big college football magazines and jot down a few notes so that you would be well informed about stuff in which you probably already knew.

I decided to note the features present, and I have chosen four which are present in all four magazines, to some extent or another.  All have some kind of Heisman preview, or at least they all refer to it.  Athlon, it seems, wants you to go to its website to check out their Heisman preview.  The only place that I saw Heisman mentioned was on page 9, which is essentially a big advertisement for Athlon’s website.  On that page, it explains that you can keep up with the “Heisman Hopefuls” throughout the season at AthlonSports.com.  A quick check, however, shows that the “Heisman Hopefuls” section isn’t ready yet.  Oh well, we can always click on HeismanPundit.com.

The next feature is coaching changes.  Well, at least all four have something to say about it.  The Sporting News and Lindy’s does a coaching changes/coach hot seat kind of thing.  Phil Steele seems to delve into the philosophy and all of the scenarios involving coaching changes including, you guessed it, numbers.  Athlon also has a section which it calls “Coaching Carousels.”  Of course, there are other places you can learn about coaching carousels or hot seats.

The third feature is All American Teams.  All four have one.  And, drum roll please, Tim Tebow is Preseason First Team All American QB by all four magazines!  Popular choice for Second Team seems to be Pat White and Chase Daniel.  Chris Wells and Knowshon Moreno is choice by all four as First Team All American at running back.  It is also important to note that Lindy’s, Athlon and Phil Steele rank either positions or units or both.  This is really interesting and an opportunity for bragging rights.

Finally, there is recruiting.

Sporting News reviews recruiting for many of the schools.  Sporting News also lists:

• Top JUCO’s (those moving on and the Super Sophomores)
• Top 50 High School Seniors
• Other Seniors to Watch
• Top 50 Juniors to Watch

Lindy’s lists include:

• Top 25 Recruiting Classes
• Top 100 Incoming Freshmen
• Top 100 for High School Seniors

Athlon also has a fairly comprehensive Recruiting preview.

• Rank each team by conference with the top 20 incoming freshmen in each conference.
• list a Top 50 Recruiting Classes
• list an “Athlon Consensus 100,” which is basically a top 100 incoming freshmen.
• list their “Top Rising High School Seniors”

Phil Steele:

• Top Frosh where lists the top 525 freshmen
• lists a Top 25 Recruiting Classes for the last 5 years
• Top 75 2008 “Frosh Recruiting Ratings,” which also includes JUCO’s
• “Conference By Conference 2008 Recruiting Ratings”

Continue to Part Two