You know summer has arrived when the college football preview magazines appear on the shelves of your local bookstore (unless it has already gone out of business). Their appearance marks just about the halfway point of the nigh-interminable off-season and are just about all we have to fortify ourselves until fall practice arrives.

As much as we delight in finally reading about the season to come rather than the one we just concluded, it's hard to say exactly how much useful information you can glean from these publications. Preview magazines are usually penned in April so even the most accurate ones are going to be hobbled by the inevitable march of unexpected events. Add to that the unexplained idiosyncrasies of each one and you pretty much are just taking their word on a lot of it.

Now, obviously, we suggest you get your season preview information from our own Bill Connelly's superb series here on SB Nation which is full of stats and insights and more ceiling references than you can shake a stick at. But it also might be helpful to look at the preview magazine's assessment as a whole to get something of a barometer of what the general sentiments are about the 2013 season.

Sure, we know everyone is high on Alabama and Johnny Manziel but what about the rest of the field? Who is expected to emerge from the pack and make that surprise run for championship? What powerhouse program is expected to stumble? Perhaps, by examining the preview magazines assessments we can get an idea. Not because they are necessarily accurate but because it might show us the preconceptions about different teams going into the season.

That matters because in two months, those preconceptions are going to be transformed into poll standings and then the rough beast begins slouching toward Pasadena once again.

To do this I purchased four of the best known college football preview magazines; Athlon Sports, Lindy's Sports, The Sporting News and Phil Steele. I took each one's top 25 and awarded every team points corresponding to their placement. So the No. 1 team got 25 points and the No. 25 team got one point. I then took each magazine's All-American squads and awarded each team two points for a first-team player and one point for a second team player.





Here is the resulting Top 25:

TOTAL Poll Total AA1TTotal AA2TTotal 1 Alabama 134 100 26 8 2 Ohio State 110 93 12 5 3 Stanford 99 81 14 4 4 Oregon 96 84 8 4 5 Texas A&M 87 70 16 1 6 South Carolina 82 73 8 1 7 Georgia 81 73 4 4 8 Notre Dame 79 62 14 3 9 Clemson 75 67 6 2 10 Florida 67 57 10 0 11 Louisville 66 66 0 0 12 Oklahoma State 63 63 0 0 13 Florida State 61 55 2 4 14 LSU 57 51 2 4 15 Texas 52 50 0 2 16 Michigan 45 37 8 0 17 Oklahoma 43 34 4 5 18 Boise State 35 35 0 0 19 USC 30 21 6 3 20 Nebraska 28 25 0 3 21 Baylor 27 16 10 1 22 TCU 23 15 4 4 23 Wisconsin 17 15 0 2 24 UCLA 17 9 6 2 25 Virginia Tech 14 14 0 0

And these are the remaining teams that earned a listing.

TOTAL Poll Total AA1TTotal AA2TTotal Michigan State 12 9 0 3 Arizona State 12 3 8 1 Washington 9 0 8 1 BYU 9 0 8 1 Kansas State 9 0 4 5 Fresno State 8 8 0 0 Miami 6 4 2 0 Oregon State 6 4 0 2 Northwestern 6 2 2 2 Arizona 6 0 4 2 Tulane 6 0 6 0 Missouri 5 0 4 1 Kent State 4 0 4 0 Vanderbilt 4 0 0 4 Tennessee 4 0 0 4 Miami 3 3 0 0 UNC 3 0 0 3 Miss. State 2 0 0 2 Arkansas 2 0 0 2 Rice 2 0 0 2 NC State 2 0 2 0 Ole Miss 1 1 0 0 Maryland 1 0 0 1 Houston 1 0 0 1 Pitt 1 0 0 1 Iowa State 1 0 0 1 Toledo 1 0 0 1 N. Illinois 1 0 0 1