Episode 138 – It’s college football preview magazine time!

The next time you happen to be in the grocery store or anywhere else with a magazine rack to browse and skim, do yourself a favor and make sure to walk by the magazine rack. You should start seeing the annual preseason college football magazines start to fill the rack. If that does not get you excited, then what will?

I have always been a fan of these preseason magazines. There have been years when I would buy the national addition from each magazine publisher. As someone who covers college football today I find myself even more interested in the magazines, and they actually have become a nice easy reference guide at times. Naturally, I have been curious about the process of putting these all together, especially in an age where we not only get national editions but numerous conference or region-specific editions to provide a little bit more information. I am sure there are some junkies out there who buy all of the national and available region editions. If that describes you, I admire your devotion.

But how do these magazines continue to put together a quality product year-in and year-out when faced with increasing competition sources from the Internet? More importantly, how does a business built on a foundation in print media adapt to the latest digital trends and options?

To walk us through a bit of the magazine production process I was joined by Steven Lassan from Athlon Sports. Lassan is the college football editor at Athlon Sports and AthlonSports.com and has been kind enough to invite me to participate from time to time with their ongoing round table discussions with staff members. In addition to getting a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the magazine business, we also touch on a couple nuggets from the past couple of weeks in college football, with quick takes on Brady Hoke calling out Notre Dame and Bob Stoops saying the SEC is over-hyped. For good measure I threw in a Mack Brown question.

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Lane Kiffin in the MAC? Conference USA? He may have thought about it

If you ever thought the pressure of coaching at USC might get to head coach Lane Kiffin, you might have been right. Kiffin admitted that he has at least mulled the idea of coaching at a lower profile school, or even a high school, in an interview with Ralph Russo of the Associated Press.

“I did think the other day what it would be like to be a high school head coach or to be at a small school,” Kiffin said in the AP story. “I thought about it the other day. The first time. I wonder if there’s something to that peace of mind. Maybe it’s something I can go back and do when I get older. I’m going to go coach high school.”

If 2013 does not go well, could Lane Kiffin be at a smaller school in 2014? Photo: Getty Images

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The NFL has changed Chip Kelly, sort of

Some said Chip Kelly would never be able to fit in to the NFL. That ultimately is up for debate until we see him coach a game on a Sunday, but we do have a report now that suggests the NFL has changed Kelly…

This is the real breaking news out of #Eagles practice right now. RT @zberm: Chip is wearing a hat, not a visor.

— Kevin McGuire (@KevinOnCFB) May 13, 2013

Darn you NFL!

2012 Big East championship rings for Rutgers

The final year of Big East play in football ended with a four-way tie for the conference championship. Louisville came out on top withe tiebreakers awarding the Cardinals with the conference’s automatic BCS berth, sending Louisville to the Sugar Bowl to take on the SEC’s Florida Gators. To get there Louisville needed a second-half rally on the road against future Big Ten member Rutgers.

Rutgers still managed to finish in the four-way tie with Louisville, Cincinnati and ACC-bound Syracuse though, and they rewarded their team appropriately with championship rings.

Rutgers 2012 Big East championship rings.

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Column: I think I love Wyoming’s new field design

Sometimes I think Wyoming gets a bad wrap. To field a major college football program in the state of Wyoming takes a certain level of bravery, or perhaps stupidity, yet Wyoming has been doing it for a long time, first as a founding member of the WAC and later one of the original Mountain West Conference members. Sure, Wyoming may not be the most competitive program out there. Bill Clinton was in office the last time Wyoming had consecutive winning seasons. Over the last decade the casual college football fans probably know more about Wyoming’s uniforms than Jay Novacek, who went from the Wyoming Cowboys to the Dallas Cowboys during their 1990s Super Bowl years (after a stop in the Cardinals organization). You can credit that to ESPN’s humorous Bottom 10 feature during the college football season, which had a reserved spot for Wyoming’s uniforms.

Wyoming’s brown and yellow colors tend to yield some dull uniform options, but I actually think Wyoming has found a way to make them work. You know I can be picky about uniforms. I used to think Wyoming was a bit of a wreck, but over time I have grown to respect how Wyoming has committed to owning the color scheme and finding ways to make it work. I may not like the all-yellow uniforms, but this is a basic uniform philosophy across the board I just cannot get on board with. It’s not you Wyoming, it’s me.

Wyoming football certainly does not have a pool of talent to recruit from within the state boundaries. Wyoming is the least populated state in the country and as you might expect, the program is relatively isolated. This does not mean success in football is unfounded. At the FCS level we have seen Montana and Montana State build reputable programs and North Dakota State has thrived at the FCS level as well. If Wyoming was playing at the FCS level, would they be able to have similar success? It would be overly speculative to assume so but with the right guidance and commitment anything would be possible. Mountain West Conference rival Boise State has become the model program in the region.

But I think the image is changing for Wyoming. I am not anywhere near saying we have a Boise State clone in the making, although I would definitely encourage the program to emulate the Broncos as closely as possible without losing their identity. But over the past couple of years I think Wyoming has taken some measures to try and build some excitement about the program. The latest move was a redesign of the field and end zones on the football field, which received high praise around the college football blogosphere this week.

Via Wyoming Athletics

The design above is what Wyoming’s field at War Memorial Stadium will look like this fall, upgrading the field from this. I have to say, I love it. Let’s review the features that I think make this one of the best looking fields in college football for the 2013 season. … Continue Reading