Sloppy gridiron gruel for hungry fans

Our weeklong preview of the previews concludes today with a look at the top preview on the market, Street & Smith's Pro Football 2005 Yearbook. If you're going to purchase just one preview this summer, this is the one indispensable package you can reference all season long.

 

Here are the rest of our preview profiles, from worst to first

Monday, June 27: Sporting News
Tuesday, June 28: Athlon Sports
Wednesday, June 29: Lindy's
Thursday, June 30: Pro Football Weekly
Friday, July 1: Street & Smith's

 

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The national football preview magazines all follow a tried and true formula: whip together a quick overview of each team, mix with some predictions, slather with a layer of hastily prepared feature articles, season with a dash of statistics, splash the cover with the most popular player in each local market and then spice things up with some gratuitous snapshots of bosomy young cheerleaders.

 

These league-wide previews achieve varying degrees of success. Some are welded together with fact-filled insight. Others are Scotch-taped together with opinion-filled trivial tripe that offers nothing to the serious fan. In either case, it is a fast and easy buck for publishers: angry pigskin trolls like you and us who have gone nearly half a year without real live football action snap up these issues by the millions, wolfing down every little tantalizing scrap of gridiron gruel in eager anticipation of a full plate of tasty football treats in September.

 

You could take your chances randomly selecting a single issue off the magazine rack, or you could buy every single one and take in all the info. But at an average price of nearly $7 per issue buying each preview is an easy way to waste a lot of money better spent on beer and porn. Plus, what kind of friendless outcasts have the time and the pathologically asocial inclination to pore through every last word of every god-forsaken preview – in the height of summer, no less?

 

Oh, that's right. We do.

 

We looked at five major national pro football previews: Athlon Sports Pro Football 2005 NFL Preview, Lindy's 2005 Pro Football, Pro Football Weekly NFL Preview 2005, Sporting News Pro Football 2005 Preview and Street & Smith's Pro Football 2005 Yearbook.

 

We've pored through each and every one, and will offer up one report each day this week, starting with the worst preseason preview and making our way to the best – the one you should pick up Friday and start reading over the July 4th weekend.

 

Sure, this involves quite a bit of subjectivity. But, as always, we put our faith in every possible instance in the harsh, inalterable reality of raw numbers.