Of the six or eight preseason football magazines that usually appear in print versions and are sold at bookstores or big newsstands, I believe only two are put out by those knowledgable about betting. IE, by touts.
Those would be Phil Steele's College Football Preview, and the one issued by The Gold Sheet.
This year TGS is strictly online. I don't know why, some kind of marketing decision. Anyone can go to their site and download it --- Free! No doubt if you do so your Inbox this season will be replete with offers from the TGS for their many services.
And it's not out of the question that the e-addresses they garner will be sold to their sportbook advertisers.
I'll nonethless consider the TGS effort a print pub, as it was since it began. There are other strictly online preseason magss, or at least predictive rants.
Steele's mag is thick (over 300 pages this year) and - uh - dense. It's his boast that it contains more info that those of his competitors - Lindys, Streets, Sporting News, etc.
And that's true. But for the bettor, methinks there is way to much info!
Mainly that in his Position Outlook for each of the 119 teams, he always (for each set of positions) goes back at least four years, and often six or seven.
Only a dedicated fan of a particular team really needs to know how a qb or a defensive line performed in the year 2000 AD!
Steele seems to have deliberately aimed this publication at the pure fan, rather than at the bettor/fan. It's mainly the pure fan who would revel in reading this over-detailed analysis of seasons past.
Add to this that the type size of most of the mag is in the "Racing Form Past Performance" font, means that this pub tends in some respects to be a good soporific! And eyestrain-inducing.
It does give the ATS records of each team in various situations, for the last six years. But Steele, unlike TGS, seems to very deliberately avoid discussing a team's current capability ATS. Like it's a forbidden topic.
Strange for a guy who makes his living mainly as a tout.
I assume that the largest segment of preseason foot mag buyers are pure fans, and those are the ones he directs the product to.
Also, Steele is on several national committees that choose the array of awards given to the best college player at that position.
For instance he helps pick the Rotary Lombardi Award for Best Lineman. I'm sure many of his colleagues on these committees view sports gambling as THE original sin.
I also don't like the fact that (unline TGS) his logs of each team carry no date. Important, in my view.
All that said, Steele's pub will be of great value to a bettor. You just have to know what bears reading and what can be skimmed.
His forecasts for each team is good. Ditto his returning lettermen and starters, which he says he will update free on his website. Good.
And perhaps of greatest interest to the bettor is his various formulas for determining which teams will be improved this season (he means straight-up, but hopefully ATS as well!)
He says that checking items like not only returning starters (an overplayed technique) and letterman are immportant, but also the turnover ratio, players drafted by NFL, number of close games lost vs same won, and other techniques to track the ups and downs, season to season.
These are likely worth the price of the book. Unfortunately, Steele does not give us a years-long revew ATS of how each technique performed. And even SU he tends, as befits a tout, to talk more about his accurate past forecasts than his misses.
But the mag is worth the relatively small cost. And it contains a coupon for a free issue of his NFL preseason mag, due out in August. Of course, that will put you on mailing lists!
The Gold Sheet, at noted, is also free this year. (And as usual includes both college and NFL) I'm one who does not like reading a mag or book online, so I hope this TGS experiment fails. But it is free online, and worth getting.
TGS is maybe the best-written of all the preseason mags. You won't fall asleep much in perusing it. And it rarely goes back more than a year or two for any team, and that, if done, is done briefly.
It does not pretend that betting on the games does not exist - hell, that's TGS's raison d'etre!
Steele has an intersting section where he picks 12 BCS "surprise teams" (presumably SU but that would also spill over to ATS) and 5 non-BCS potential surprisers. Teams that will do better than many think.
His top 5 BCS surprise teams are Florida State (I agree); Va Tech; Penn State; Ohio State; South Florida
And the top 3 non-BCS surprise packages: Hawaii: TCU: Boise St.
The Gold Sheet doesn't have a specific surprise teams section, but they do pick Texas A&M to finish with a 5th place national ranking. I concur that the Ags will be a good bet this season.
They also have LSU and Oklahoma at 6th and 7th respectively, while Steele (and most others) have these two teams at the #2 and # 3 spots. (USC is everyone's consensus choice to be numero uno.)
For those who don't bet summer sports the preseason mags are small oases in a big desert.
Those would be Phil Steele's College Football Preview, and the one issued by The Gold Sheet.
This year TGS is strictly online. I don't know why, some kind of marketing decision. Anyone can go to their site and download it --- Free! No doubt if you do so your Inbox this season will be replete with offers from the TGS for their many services.
And it's not out of the question that the e-addresses they garner will be sold to their sportbook advertisers.
I'll nonethless consider the TGS effort a print pub, as it was since it began. There are other strictly online preseason magss, or at least predictive rants.
Steele's mag is thick (over 300 pages this year) and - uh - dense. It's his boast that it contains more info that those of his competitors - Lindys, Streets, Sporting News, etc.
And that's true. But for the bettor, methinks there is way to much info!
Mainly that in his Position Outlook for each of the 119 teams, he always (for each set of positions) goes back at least four years, and often six or seven.
Only a dedicated fan of a particular team really needs to know how a qb or a defensive line performed in the year 2000 AD!
Steele seems to have deliberately aimed this publication at the pure fan, rather than at the bettor/fan. It's mainly the pure fan who would revel in reading this over-detailed analysis of seasons past.
Add to this that the type size of most of the mag is in the "Racing Form Past Performance" font, means that this pub tends in some respects to be a good soporific! And eyestrain-inducing.
It does give the ATS records of each team in various situations, for the last six years. But Steele, unlike TGS, seems to very deliberately avoid discussing a team's current capability ATS. Like it's a forbidden topic.
Strange for a guy who makes his living mainly as a tout.
I assume that the largest segment of preseason foot mag buyers are pure fans, and those are the ones he directs the product to.
Also, Steele is on several national committees that choose the array of awards given to the best college player at that position.
For instance he helps pick the Rotary Lombardi Award for Best Lineman. I'm sure many of his colleagues on these committees view sports gambling as THE original sin.
I also don't like the fact that (unline TGS) his logs of each team carry no date. Important, in my view.
All that said, Steele's pub will be of great value to a bettor. You just have to know what bears reading and what can be skimmed.
His forecasts for each team is good. Ditto his returning lettermen and starters, which he says he will update free on his website. Good.
And perhaps of greatest interest to the bettor is his various formulas for determining which teams will be improved this season (he means straight-up, but hopefully ATS as well!)
He says that checking items like not only returning starters (an overplayed technique) and letterman are immportant, but also the turnover ratio, players drafted by NFL, number of close games lost vs same won, and other techniques to track the ups and downs, season to season.
These are likely worth the price of the book. Unfortunately, Steele does not give us a years-long revew ATS of how each technique performed. And even SU he tends, as befits a tout, to talk more about his accurate past forecasts than his misses.
But the mag is worth the relatively small cost. And it contains a coupon for a free issue of his NFL preseason mag, due out in August. Of course, that will put you on mailing lists!
The Gold Sheet, at noted, is also free this year. (And as usual includes both college and NFL) I'm one who does not like reading a mag or book online, so I hope this TGS experiment fails. But it is free online, and worth getting.
TGS is maybe the best-written of all the preseason mags. You won't fall asleep much in perusing it. And it rarely goes back more than a year or two for any team, and that, if done, is done briefly.
It does not pretend that betting on the games does not exist - hell, that's TGS's raison d'etre!
Steele has an intersting section where he picks 12 BCS "surprise teams" (presumably SU but that would also spill over to ATS) and 5 non-BCS potential surprisers. Teams that will do better than many think.
His top 5 BCS surprise teams are Florida State (I agree); Va Tech; Penn State; Ohio State; South Florida
And the top 3 non-BCS surprise packages: Hawaii: TCU: Boise St.
The Gold Sheet doesn't have a specific surprise teams section, but they do pick Texas A&M to finish with a 5th place national ranking. I concur that the Ags will be a good bet this season.
They also have LSU and Oklahoma at 6th and 7th respectively, while Steele (and most others) have these two teams at the #2 and # 3 spots. (USC is everyone's consensus choice to be numero uno.)
For those who don't bet summer sports the preseason mags are small oases in a big desert.
