Searching the newsstands for college football magazines has long been a tradition for me. Reading the national and Big Ten forecasts of various publications has ranked among my top 10 delights of summer since grade school.
Somewhere between fresh strawberry shortcake and lazing by a swimming pool comes the pleasure of reading about the Gophers, the Big Ten race, the nation’s top 25 teams, preseason All-Americans, the best incoming freshmen and high school seniors to watch. Through the years, publications have expanded their content and in addition to all of the above a reader just might see a pictorial of the nation’s hottest cheerleaders, or an article on regional tailgating with recipes included.
As a kid I was excited in late July or early August to buy my Street & Smith’s, the bible of college football magazines. The best of times was reading Street & Smith’s in the family car as we drove thousands of miles during August vacations. I read page after page and it didn’t matter that the predicted order of finish in the Big Ten was similar each year.
Perhaps there was appeal ─ even security ─to the sameness of each issue. An Ohio State football player was often the Street & Smith’s cover boy. The Big Ten section was always written by Columbus sportswriter Paul Hornung. As a kid I was almost dumbfounded by the coincidence that there could be a Paul Hornung newspaper guy and an even more famous Notre Dame and Green Bay player by the same name.
Ohio State (no surprise) was often the favorite in the Big Ten race and it was a rare issue that predicted a high finish for the Gophers, but that didn’t stop me from analyzing every word Hornung wrote about Minnesota. Often I thought he slighted the Gophers, showing an eastern football bias.
And I might even have been critical of the Gophers chosen for photos in the magazine, or perhaps the absence of any Minnesota players. Back in the 1950s and 1960s players posed for stock photos, often not wearing helmets and grimacing like a pro wrestler. But who cared as long as your favorites were included in the magazines?
Today the marketing is more sophisticated with regional covers, and now a Gopher is often found on the cover like this year’s issue of Sporting News College Football Magazine that includes a small picture of Minnesota quarterback MarQueis Gray. The marketing plan also puts the college football publications on the newsstands before summer officially arrives.
That means I am a buyer now in June, not August as in the old days. And there are more magazines to choose from, making this preseason tradition almost as much fun as the fall college football season.
To some the preseason publications are a waste of time and money. This view is pragmatic and asserts that nothing matters about the college football season but the results on the field. I can’t argue that games are won on paper but college football publications offer a glimpse into what might happen and fire up the passion on the eve of the season.
If you don’t get it, then maybe you don’t like strawberry shortcake either.