Sporting News League Preview Coming

Just a "heads up" that your blogger's MAAC preview for The Sporting News' College Basketball Annual is due in early July.

While the magazine prohibits its preview writers from revealing too much information in advance, your blogger will give a "sneak preview" of sorts with the predicted order of finish and, even, a sentence or two about each team at some point in mid July.

And, I will make a commercial endorsement. Of all the national newsstand-available publications, The Sporting News is by far the best. It traces its roots to when it was the very respected Street & Smith's College Basketball Annual. And, yours truly has S&S preview magazines dating back to the late 1960s.

A few years back, S&S and The Sporting News merged, and the The Sporting News brand was kept. But the majority of those who wrote for S&S, this blogger included, now write for The Sporting News.

TSN only hires writers with long-time direct connections to the leagues they preview. I've been involved in covering the MAAC since 1985, or for 25 of the 29 years of the league's existence. Writers who preview other leagues have been doing so for dozens and dozens of years.

I'm not exactly certain when The Sporting News' College Basketball Annual will hit the newsstands, but it has traditionally been in mid-September.

My only concern not only about The Sporting News, but any of the national preview magazines, is that the mid-major conferences don't get the space they deserve. The MAAC gets one full page, while in the high-major conferences each team gets a full page. But, clearly the interest is at that level a lot moreso than at the mid-major level.

Still, there's a sizeable pocket of mid-major level fans, and we all know how strong the interest is from fans who follow the MAAC.

So, my preview for The Sporting News will be as informative as you'll find anywhere in a national publication (I hope). But, if you want even more than that, then there's one good place to find plenty.

And, that's right here ... as always, "Keepin' Track of the MAAC" remains the best source for conference news and happenings.

Thanks for reading, and keep it up.