CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: Cincydawg on April 08, 2018, 07:07:39 AM
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Twenty years ago, roughly, I'd buy one of these and leaf through it. I learned over time that nearly everything in it other than reams of statistics could be found here, or I already knew anyway, or was irrelevant. I then resorted to glancing at them at Kroger and putting them back on the rack, just seeing what they said about UGA, which was stuff I already knew. Of course, I got a lot more educated once I started reading this site, or its predecessor etc. etc. etc.
They still have a market apparently even in this day of the Internet, and I can imagine some fans save them for years and years and have piles of dog eared "Athlons" sitting in a box somewhere. With all the information available today for free I'm a bit surprised they survive, and even prosper given the number available for each sport. I idly wonder how many of them get read beyond the favorite team and a few rivals.
ELA does a better job condensing information into something usable anyway. Duh.
I moved into the wife's house 5 years ago after living in my house for some 25 years and I of course ran across boxes, not of Athlon's or NatGeos, but "stuff" I guess at one time I thought was worth saving. My current move is better for me as a result, but I still come across "stuff" and wonder why in the world I thought I'd ever want to reread that. I cannot recall throwing something out and later wishing I had it back, or even being able to recall what I threw out, of this general ilk.
Are you a pack rat? Do you save old "stuff" just because someday you think you might want it? Do you ever sift through "stuff" in your basement on a rainy afternoon and end up with an extra large garbage pile? Good idea if you don't.
I had two foot lockers of stuff on my son, newspaper articles, letters, "stuff" I couldn't through out but no longer have room for so I "dumped" all that and more on my poor daughter, who likely will store it in her basement until some time she has to move. Now, that isn't the kind of thing I can easily discard in the trash of course, but I don't really have a need to look back through it, ever.
We need 7 years of tax records and some other official documents, and some other "stuff", but really not that much when you think about it. At least I don't have a 2001 Athlon in a box somewhere. I do have some ancient baseball cards about to be pitched. Humans are strange creatures really. We are not well adapted to modernity in a lot of ways, and have created this modernity despite ourselves.
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I still a get a preseason magazine shortly before we go on vacation in the summer so I can lay by the pool or on the beach and leaf through it. I never save them. At some point they all get tossed.
I am not a pack rat but my wife sorta is which can lead to some, ahem, interesting conversations sometimes. Lol. I am strange in that I have basically zero sentimentality around “stuff.” My dad died nearly 20 years ago and I have nothing he ever owned or cherished. I have one small picture of he and I that is displayed in my living room. It’s all I need. Same with any family member I’ve ever lost.
However, I could see me taking a much different approach if it were one of my children.
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I just came across a smaller box full of old newspapers and Sports Illustrateds. They now reside in recycling.
I had them in a box for decades, most of them, and never looked at them.
Yeah, the newspaper articles, and there were many, about my son don't get thrown out. I just ran across a WSJ article written about the "Sole Survivor" and how he's doing, front page article for them back when. The author sent me two copies. Gave one to my kids, read the other one, this was 7 years old or so.
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I always pick up Athlon as pool reading material. It's generally far from the best, but I find it's readability highest. As others have pointed out, at this point t, those mags aren't the place to go for the best in depth info anyway. Phil Steele comes closest, but I can't think of anything less enjoyable to read by the pool.
I have all my old ones, probably back to 1993ish, somewhere. For a middle school project, in a pre Google images era, I decimated a handful of them with scissors.
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I like the "vacation/poll reading material" notion. I can see that, spend $8 or so and peruse at leisure in the sun.
I still get less out of them than I do reading stuff here. I agree Athlon is more "reader friendly" and some pack in some many stats you get lost and don't care and they likely mean nothing anyway, but it makes the mag look "technical".
The Dawgs should be pretty solid again this year, hard not to be with their recruiting. A pretty good coach should be able to have them winning at least 10 a year no matter what.
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I read everything on-line these days
mostly on my home desk top - a bit on my phone
paperless is good
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Yup, but perhaps sitting by the pool without wifi makes the paper a decent alternative.
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agreed
wish I was closer to the equator today by the pool with a paper
Hawaii, Cancun, Manzanillo, Grand Cayman, the Keys............
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I read everything on-line these days
mostly on my home desk top - a bit on my phone
paperless is good
Me too, but outside like that, I'd rather have the hard copy.
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yup, those folks sitting outside squinting at their Kindles bother me
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Outside like that, I'd rather be fishing.
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Outside like that, I'd rather be fishing.
You don't catch anything worth keeping in a pool
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(https://assets.vogue.com/photos/59663e47e3b54a033a5aa7e8/16:9/pass/00-social-tout-phoebe.jpg)
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I do have a big arse box of old Street and Smith's (among others), some going back to the 70s.
During my teen years and into college, it was always a race to find the first ones before my brothers or friends. An airport seemed to be the best spot for this. Then the race was on to spot check these for mistakes, which wasn't/isn't hard. A lot of these presumably have team capsule deadlines which come within mere days of spring practice, sometimes before.
I always found it pretty funny how Lindy's would throw in a couple pages of cheerleaders.
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I’ve always liked Street and Smith’s. When I was a kid I used to get their baseball preview and read it cover to cover. No exaggeration. I’d manually go over each player’s season ending stats to see who were the top 3 in each category. Hits, HR, BA, Doubles, Triples, Steals.
I can still recall stats from memory from those days because of combing through S&S. Andre Dawson hit .287 with 49 HR and 137 RBI in 1987. Dale Murphy hit 44 HR and drove in 105 runs that year. Tony Gwynn hit .370. I can’t tell you jack about who did what last year in MLB but ask me about 1984-1989 and I’m all over it.
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hah, I had an awesome memory when I was 14 years old
went to crap
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Dale Murphy was the Guest Star at the last fantasy camp I attended. I is truly a very very nice guy, lots of great stories, very modest and unassuming.
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I used to buy a few every year when I was a teen. Loved 'em. Seeing "Street and Smith's" here takes me back, lol.
Athlon I loved because they always had the 2-deep with jersey numbers - which I used to update my college football video game. Lindy's seemed cheaper to me. Sporting News always had great photos.
Into my later 20s and into my 30s, I've found they're good for a plane ride and not much else. Nowadays, I know as much as the magazines do and they're out of date.
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I bet the group of us here with The Bobs could produce a first class web site that would beat any of these things.
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If Antholon has a cover pic I like, I'll pick it up.
Also I have a box of printed memorabilia that I like wonder through before the season starts, and add something too each year. (Usually a ticket stub of a Big game, game day program, or Dispatch write up.)
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I bet the group of us here with The Bobs could produce a first class web site that would beat any of these things.
We have him all set up, with his own server and everything. He's gone dark for a while.
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Ranking the Big Ten's Quarterbacks for 2018
https://athlonsports.com/college-football/ranking-big-tens-quarterbacks-2018 (https://athlonsports.com/college-football/ranking-big-tens-quarterbacks-2018)
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Ranking the Big Ten's Quarterbacks for 2018
https://athlonsports.com/college-football/ranking-big-tens-quarterbacks-2018 (https://athlonsports.com/college-football/ranking-big-tens-quarterbacks-2018)
Deepest QB crop in the conference I can recall. Not sure I get putting Nebraska above Indiana. I'd move Indiana over them, from #11 to #10, and say 1-10 are all pretty damn good. Hell, he has Thorson #7, and I'm seeing him as a projected top 10 NFL draft pick next year.
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Yeah, but there's always around 37 potential top 10 picks for the next draft, regardless of what year it is.
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Athlon I loved because they always had the 2-deep with jersey numbers - which I used to update my college football video game. Lindy's seemed cheaper to me. Sporting News always had great photos.
Into my later 20s and into my 30s, I've found they're good for a plane ride and not much else. Nowadays, I know as much as the magazines do and they're out of date.
Steele's is most thorough but my go-to was/is always Lindy's. They were the most available and had great regional marketing wherever I was. I still buy Lindy's to keep the tradition alive (probably bought Lindy's every year since 1999). And I buy extras for my brothers, both of whom are deployed and will be receiving them in care packages.
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Yeah, I'll always buy Athlon just because I have them all from when my dad bought me my first in like 1993, but I certainly don't tear it apart cover to cover anymore. Like someone else said, I used to use it to edit NCAA rosters, but you can just download those now.
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Wow, if I was 20-21 years old and deployed overseas, a college football preseason mag would be better than porn!
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a little over 20 years ago, back when the Huskers were in the mid-90s glory, there was the possibility locating in China for 2-3 years to build pork processing plants.
I was most worried about a satellite TV to watch games and a dial-up connection and snail mail for college football info.
One of the reasons In started posting in 1997............
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Humans seem to love rankings of things, the top ten beaches, restaurants, teams, QBs, traffic, wines, etc.
My thought is always that perfection is the enemy of good enough. I dislike rankings of most things. If I like a thing, it's good enough, I don't want to make some super effort to try Item 1 on someone's ranking. I see lists of Top 100 BBQ places in the US. How in the world can anyone really compile such a list anyway. Burfle and marketing.
The Top 100 wine list was the bane of my existence when I worked in the biz, along with Parker's ratings and Gold Medals from some fair or other. Marketing and burfle I say.
Mostly burfle.
And of course someone gets all upset that their team is ranked 28th in the AP poll in Week Two. SO WHAT??????!!!!!
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agreed
a simple list of one or more persons opinion
means nothing
I could rank football teams or bottles of wine by their colors
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ESPN does nothing but rankings anymore. I recall reading something with a former producer there, and they said people stick around for rankings more than anything else. I swear they rank NFL QBs like every 6 days.
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Rankings lead to eyeballs at some point which leads to money. So, we're stuck with them, like this one dude who posts extensive preseason rankings around here as well.
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Rankings lead to eyeballs at some point which leads to money. So, we're stuck with them, like this one dude who posts extensive preseason rankings around here as well.
Touche
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Rankings lead to eyeballs at some point which leads to money. So, we're stuck with them, like this one dude who posts extensive preseason rankings around here as well.
I'm not sure what that dude gets paid here, but it's not enough.
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I'm sure ESPN thinks they are underpaid as well
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Steele's is most thorough but my go-to was/is always Lindy's. They were the most available and had great regional marketing wherever I was. I still buy Lindy's to keep the tradition alive (probably bought Lindy's every year since 1999). And I buy extras for my brothers, both of whom are deployed and will be receiving them in care packages.
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I'm sure ESPN thinks they are underpaid as well
As bad as they are, considering FOX paid Skip Bayless like $5 million to leave, it's hard to argue with them
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Speaking of Steele's and brothers. My brother studies Steele's all Summer and then packs it up and takes it to Vegas for the first 2-3 weeks of the season. He contends the odds makers don't have a clue until the third or fourth week. He has never returned with less than +$10K. On his first 3 week stay in 2010 he returned with +$40K. Almost half of which he won in the third week on a $250 seven game parlay ticket which pays 75 to 1.
I only bet on games where the line seems way off to me - usually 3-4 in any given week. If you can have enough for a parlay, it's worth it.
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but, you haven't quit your day job?
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I guess that should've said "I've only bet..." - not an ongoing thing, but here and there in the past. Confident risk is still risk, lol.
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Well, I'm happy enough with ELA's rankings. Good to go.
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ESPN does nothing but rankings anymore. I recall reading something with a former producer there, and they said people stick around for rankings more than anything else. I swear they rank NFL QBs like every 6 days.
Top headline on ESPN's main page today? Ranking all 32 NFL QB depth charts
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I used to be somewhat involved in the wine business and was both amazed and disgruntled at how many wine drinkers think about nothing but Parker wine ratings (or other wine ratings). Folks would come into the shop with a list of wines and buy nothing but what Parker had rated 90-whatever or above.
They had no understanding of how Parker rates wines nor what appeals to Robert Parker, they were just going by his ratings with no other consideration.
I know wine can be confusing, but if you give me a few clues about what you like and how much you can spend, I can pretty well direct you to something you will like whether Parker rates it or not.
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I don't know much about cigars, but the stogies rated 90+ are pretty goooood.
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ESPN does it because rankings give people something to bitch about and chime in. Participation = $$$. It also allows for idiots to have equal time with experts on the given topic.
We (humanity) are the comments section. We're scary.
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We (humanity) are the comments section. We're scary.
My take on this is that the comments section is a reflection of folks who are incensed about whatever, usually for no good reason. They are not a reflection of the vast majority of folks out there who DGAS about it. You get the most extreme of the extreme, often as not.
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My take on this is that the comments section is a reflection of folks who are incensed about whatever, usually for no good reason. They are not a reflection of the vast majority of folks out there who DGAS about it. You get the most extreme of the extreme, often as not.
It's why the online product reviews are usually worthless. People typically don't take their time to positively review a purchase. So your reviews are split between people with a bad experience trying to "stick it" to the seller, and fake positive reviews planted by the seller.
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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.
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Daughter #1 had an internship where she was to respond to the folks dissing the company with concern and also to add in the occasional very positive review. She also "ghost wrote" a blog ostensibly written by the 70 year old founder of the company (who was never around but was featured in their marketing). I forget the name of the company.
I had a very annoying experience with Wayfair and someone there did call me up about my feedback and they did refund my money. I think they were trying to do the right thing but it was annoying.
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The AJC has 2-3 items on Dawg football each day. You can tell the writers are really struggling for topics.
I usually glance at the title and understand the article is speculation about this or that. I recall when CFN would do polls and they obviously tried to be "different" as a means to garner attention. They'd have 2-3 teams high and vice versa relative to most preseason rankings. And they'd get the expected comments (clicks).
It's all well and good to have outliers, but when the motivation is purely sensationalism it isn't very edifying. We all know that 2-3 top ten ranked teams will end up 8-5 (or worse) and a few 11-25 teams will be top ten, and one likely makes the FF. I think UGA was about 15th last year preseason and did it. And FSU of course faltered, but should be pretty good this year I think.
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https://athlonsports.com/college-football/big-ten-football-2018-all-conference-team (https://athlonsports.com/college-football/big-ten-football-2018-all-conference-team)
never dreamed I see the day that the Huskers had 2 WRs on the all-conference 1st team offense
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I like the preseason OL 1st team, but they are missing one more Badger.
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That's silly, they should change that. They're rewarding the RB and the OL for the same production. Hell, if that's legit, why would the Badgers ever pass?
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You want to talk sensationalism - Athlon has Alabama's backup QB as 1st team all-SEC. So there's that.
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That's silly, they should change that. They're rewarding the RB and the OL for the same production. Hell, if that's legit, why would the Badgers ever pass?
According to the onionheads, UW hasn't thrown a pass since King Barry showed up.
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Made a special trip to Barnes & Nobles yesterday and am keeping my eyes open in the airport bookstands, but all I've seen so far is Athlon's. Anyone starting to see Lindy's or Steele's?
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Lindys was at Reagan Natl on Thursday and my brother just snagged it at Ohare today
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Absolute perfect reading material for a flight
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ESPN does it because rankings give people something to bitch about and chime in. Participation = $$$. It also allows for idiots to have equal time with experts on the given topic.
We (humanity) are the comments section. We're scary.
Very seldom do I watch the world wide leaders except for CFB.One would have a problem discerning who's the expert/idiot in any conversation involving them.Stephen A.?Skip Clueless?Mark May(to a lesser extent)?I'm convinced if Jerry Springer had a sports journalism background he'd be their highest paid "expert".Content has ceased being a marketing tool of interest/importance and splashy,impedant clickbait gets the air time
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Of course, but that’s on the viewers much more than on ESPN. The average American doesn’t know when they’re being click-baited. They see/read something, experience outrage/exasperation, then see/read more so that they may share their reactions.
It’s embarrassing. I’ll keep saying it - the average person is the comments section....a frothing idiot.
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we are what we eat
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Lindys was at Reagan Natl on Thursday and my brother just snagged it at Ohare today
Lindy's finally showed up for me. Annual traditions rolls on.