Sneaking a peek
Football magazines fill summer void
Football magazines fill summer void

By Blake Jackson

Published: June 20, 2007

Flipping through pages in one of the countless annuals released around this time each year, you'll find rankings of every sort.

Teams. Players. Positions. Coaches.

You'll find the experts can't quite agree whether Oklahoma belongs on top or at the bottom of the BCS heap. You'll find everyone talking about Oklahoma State's potential to make a charge but few willing to rank them that way.

And you'll find prediction upon prediction. From the Heisman Trophy to the BCS to the NFL Draft.

But there's something you surely won't find in Lindy's 2007 College Preview: predictions on who will be suspended the week before fall two-a-days, or who will have their season ended by injury, or who will decide to transfer shortly after the spring game.

"It's a little bit harder when you're the first guys to publish extensive analysis of the upcoming season,” said Anthony Gimino, senior editor for Lindy's. "We'd like to have a baseline to work from, but the summer mags are what determine the baseline. We're working from scratch.”

Midsummer preview magazines arrive like buckets of ice-cold water, offering insight and expertise as respite during the pigskin drought that runs from March through August.

College football crazies — devout fans and gamblers, mostly — rush to the newsstand collecting annuals of every sort, starving for the hype. Folks such as Lindy Davis and Phil Steele make a killing.

But there's a catch.

"There are news events that affect the way you rank teams,” Gimino said. "Once the magazine is on the stand, there's nothing you can do about it.”

Take 2006, for example.

Several football annuals ranked Oklahoma among the top five teams in the country. Experts wrote of a return to the national championship game. Rhett Bomar was listed among the nation's emerging stars.

One Big Red boo-boo later, the Sooners' young but not-so-bright star was sent packing.

"(OU) ended up starting Paul Thompson, who was working at wide receiver when I wrote the magazine,” said Steele, the pen behind the monstrous, 328-page Steele's College Preview. "Fortunately, situations like that are rare.”

Still, with the Internet drawing more and more readers away from print materials, any discrepancy — big or small — can hurt the shelf life of the product.

"Readers have a lot of options,” Gimino said. "Maybe we run updates of what's happened closer to football season to avoid that. But I think most people understand the lag time in acceptance of what they're getting overall.

"So the saying goes, ‘It is what it is.' ”

Steele couldn't avoid the Bomar error. The suspension happened more than a month after his preview magazine hit newsstands.

But over the years, Steele has created a pressing policy to help ensure August won't catch his loyal readers by surprise. Even if it costs him a few of the more eager eyes.

"I do not send my magazine off to press until every spring practice is wrapped up and actually a few weeks after it,” Steele said. "Some of my competitors come out a few weeks earlier than me, and the only way to do that is to finish before spring practices are over. I wouldn't do that.”

Through mid-June, discrepancies in the 2007 college previews have been hard to come by.

A couple fail to note Mitch Mustain's transfer from Arkansas to Southern Cal. Anthony Parks is still the Cowboys' No. 3 wideout, according to Lindy's and Athlon. Parks announced in May that he was transferring to Central Missouri.

No rankings rumblings. No bombshells to speak of.

Phil Steele expects it to stay that way.

"Ninety-nine percent of what is written in the middle of May is still 100-percent true when August practices open up,” he said.

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