To get back to the initial point, we have to be getting close to Athlon coming out.
I always try to get the regional cover so I'll probably pick up the national and Big Ten versions when I'm in Michigan in a couple weeks for a wedding. I could order it, but there's something nostalgic about picking it up from the rack. I figure as long as I'm buying an outdated item, I might as well go all in and buy it an outdated way. I used to go to a book store to buy it. That's not a thing, so usually Target is the best bet.
They used to do a joint UM/MSU regional cover, which, depending on how good MSU was at the time, varied from a 50/50 split to being about 75/25 in favor of UM. I believe they just started splitting it and doing a UM cover and an MSU cover. I remember last year, due to error, Ann Arbor got the MSU covers. I was delighted when I went to buy it, but found it funny. Thanks to Twitter, I subsequently became aware of the Ann Arbor wide outrage. I did find it funny, people using social media, to complain that they couldn't get the specific outdated item they wanted via their outdated method of purchasing it.
It lacks the anticipation I was had at this time of year. Partially due to adulthood, but partially due to the abundance of info. It felt like college football went into a cave on January 2. It poked it's head out once for a spring game, which you could only see by attending, then the magazine coming out was your first glimse back in, followed by the release of the EA game in July. It was weird, you could usually guess who was probably going to be good again, but aside from that, you never actually learned who was supposed to be good until you bought the magazine. But it was beeyond that, simply seeing images of college football was something that wasn't at your fingertips.