Inside the Preview Magazines: Sporting News 2011 College Football Review
By Paul Jordan
We continue our tour of the football preview magazines today and we look at the Sporting News College Football Guide. Perhaps TSN is living on their name, but this guide is woefully short on information when you compare it to the other two guides we have looked at. If the Phil Steele Guide was the New York Times, the TSN guide is sadly USA Today. Lots of concise stories with pretty colors to look at. And very little coverage of Kentucky.
HOW WILL THE WILDCATS FARE?
In the TSN self described toughest conference in college football, our beloved Wildcats are picked …. wait for it …. fifth in the SEC East. I guess we can take solace that defending national champ Auburn is picked fifth in the SEC West. Kentucky is marked as a “descending team” in the color graphics, so I assume we will be worse than last year.
There is not a lot of information in the TSN guide to figure out why Kentucky will be worst than last year. The guide “punishes” teams that make up the lower part of the standings by cutting their page count. The top two teams in the East, South Carolina and Florida, both get two pages. Teams 3-6 just get one glossy page.
And there is not a lot of information on that page. First they state that Mike Hartline was injured for the BBVA Compass Bowl, not suspended. They also have this quote from Joker Phillips on Morgan Newton:
“He’s improved even more since that bowl game. He knows where the ball is supposed to go”
I’m dropping $8 for some real in depth analysis here. Really there is no more insight into the players or teams that we don’t know already. They do have abut 30 pages of coverage devoted to FCS teams and also list things like a whole page of transfers. TSN does not even rate the teams from top to bottom, although they do not have Kentucky headed to a bowl this year. On the other hand, they do have Louisville headed to the BBVA Compass Bowl.
INDIVIDUAL HONORS
No big shock here, but no Kentucky players were listed in the top three All American Teams. They have just one ALL SEC Team and I am happy that both OL Larry Warford and LB Danny Trevathan made the list. On the Kentucky page, LaRod King is singled out as a “Game Changer”. They also rate Kentucky’s top five incoming recruits. According to TSN that would be Glenn Faulkner, Darrian Miller, Zach West, Marcus Caffey, and Daryl Collins.
And sadly, this is it for Kentucky football coverage. Don’t get me wrong, the magazine is slick and looks good, but is all style and no substance. Even if you are a hardcore football fan, you would be through with this guide in just a couple of hours. We will continue our tour of the Preview Magazines tomorrow.
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