Summer time. Vacation time. College football magazine time.

I saw them last week, for the first time, in the local mega grocery store. Athlon's. Lindy's. Sporting News. Phil Steele. Every year these magazines literally burst off the racks with their bright colors and bold headlines. Nebraska's Back. Sooners Booming. Alabama Revival. Yes, and don't forget the honey shots on page 74.

For the last 30 years or so, I've been a college football magazine junkie. I bought them all, every year, stacked them up at home and pored through every page. I have the original Big Eight magazine collection, the entire set, somewhere in a box in my basement. You buy these more for the great photos and the position rankings and schedules, all the other fun stuff. It's a football quick fix in June and July. But is it really necessary anymore?

I don't know. I'm thinking about not buying any of them this year.

Sad but true, the college football magazines are outdated. Literally. It used to be they were the only place you could go to find information on all the teams before the season. But in 2010, college football is a year-round, big media operation. There's nothing in these books now that you haven't already watched on ESPN's College Football Live every day, or read on espn.com's many conference blogs or on si.com or cbsports.com or collegefootballnews.com or many of the newspaper blogs, including Omaha.com. The season preview no longer exists; it's stretched across several off-season months. You get the preview every day or every week now online. Phil Steele has a lot of good stuff, and he has this aura of being insanely accurate. But again, if you know where to look, a lot of Steele's information is online already.

So what's the point of buying the magazines? There's nothing really new in there. Maybe the honey section.

We'll see. Old habits die hard. But in this world of college football 360, the magazines don't have that freshness or that same appeal.

Maybe this year I'll just buy one.

See you back here on July 25, before Big 12 Media Days in Dallas. Nebraska is first up on Monday afternoon, July 26.

« Blog - Tom Shatel

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