1. Some transfer news was made Tuesday, as Michigan State sophomore center Garrick Sherman announced that he would be heading to Notre Dame for his final two seasons, while NC State freshman guard Ryan Harrow and new head Wolfpack coach Mark Gottfried agreed to part ways.  The 6’10 Sherman averaged 3/3 while shooting 70% from the field for Tom Izzo last year, and he actually started half of the team’s 34 games — Mike Brey is picking up a potentially solid offensive contributor when Sherman becomes eligible in the 2012-13 season.  As for Harrow, the former five-star recruit has not indicated where he intends to transfer yet, but NCSU said it will release him to any non-ACC school he desires.  He was clearly disappointed in last month’s firing of Sidney Lowe, and although the talented guard averaged 9/3 in 23 MPG last year for NC State, he’ll take his services elsewhere over the summer (hot rumor, later denied: Kentucky).
2. Keeping with the NC State theme, this is stupdendous.  In four years of doing this, we may have never come across a more pointless article than this one from Andrew Jones on FoxSports.com.  Apparently the relatives of NC State’s new live mascot, Tuffy the dog (a Tamaskan), were poisoned by being fed fish laced with antifreeze.  Not Tuffy himself, mind you, but the relatives of Tuffy, both of whom reside 170 miles away from Raleigh, the city where Tuffy lives and will next season begin work as the Wolfpack live mascot.  You’re probably wondering how someone could come up with 500+ words on this story, but we encourage you to read the full article where you will learn that Tamaskans are Finnish dogs, that they resemble wolves but do not share ancestry with them, and that NC State AD Debbie Yow, who proffered the original idea for a live mascot, thinks that poisoning the parents of Tuffy is “sick.”  Oh, and you’ll also learn some enlightening information as to why actual wolves cannot used at NC State games (y’know, because they’re wolves).  We’re 100% certain that somewhere Gary Williams is loving all of this.
3. That John Calipari/Dominican Republic thing from last year might come to fruition after all, as the DR apparently has an offer on the table for the Kentucky coach to lead its team in the 2011 Tournament of the Americas. The country is attempting to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and so far, Calipari is playing coy by asking “why are [they] calling me?”  If he decides to take the job, he would work with the team for a six-week period in August and September, giving his cadre of new blue chippers just enough time on campus to cause all sorts of mayhem before the head coach returns for the start of practice.
4. We hope that if Calipari takes the new summer job opportunity, he doesn’t expect to get the same kinds of crowds he enjoys in Lexington.  The NCAA released its attendance numbers yesterday, and Kentucky had the highest average home attendance with 23,603 fans jammed into Rupp Arena every night.  Syracuse was second last season with an average of 22,312 fans per game, and the sport as a whole totaled 27.6 million fans for the entire year.  Across the entirety of D1 basketball schools, that comes to an average of roughly 80,000 fans per school per season (or around 5,000 per home game).  Two Mountain West schools, BYU and San Diego State, had the largest attendance increases over last year, both averaging more than 4,000 more fans per game in 2010-11.  The full NCAA report is here.
5. In a blockbuster expose piece on Monday, the New York Times’ Katie Porter blows the cover off the sham known as Title IX and how schools manipulate their team rosters to ensure compliance with the federal law.  From discussions of female cross-country runners at South Florida stating that they didn’t know they were on the team to male fencers acting as female athletes at Cornell, it’s clear from her investigation and analysis that the original intent of this law (equity in sporting opportunities) has been bastardized to a point where reform is not only badly desired, it appears necessary.  Great read — check it out immediately if you have not yet seen it.

Along with all the news/hype surrounding decisions on whether or not to enter the NBA Draft, there are other college basketball headlines:

• Title IX rears its ugly head in a different form than we are used to seeing. The NCAA handed down a 2-year probation sentence to Southeast Missouri. The more interesting thing about it is that it seems like more serious violations came from the women’s program. Are teams really cheating in women’s college basketball?
• Ten cities have submitted their names for the 2012-2016 Final 4. The list seems pretty standard with the exception of Phoenix (never hosted one before) and Arlington-Dallas-Fort Worth (couldn’t they just pick one?).
• In news that probably falls under the “Who?” category, Tennessee Volunteer reserve Ryan Childress recently underwent successful knee surgery. We wonder how Bruce Pearl will replace his 2.3 PPG and 2.4 RPG if Childress has to miss any time.
• Apparently, Georgia Tech head coach Paul Hewitt was quite animated during the most recent Knight Commission. While I agree with some of what he said, I think the point about concerns regarding maintaining eligibility as a reason that many athletes don’t take higher level classes is ridiculous. I don’t think anybody who is taking Theoretical Physics is going to be worried about meeting a minimum GPA. My favorite part of the article is Len Elmore blaming the straight to NBA trend as the reason why the Lebron James has “no mid-range game”. Does anybody think Lebron wouldn’t have just bulldozed his way to the basket if he had stayed in college for 4 years?
• It’s really too bad that Kansas guard Sherron Collins isn’t going pro – next year could be very difficult for him on the road in the Big 12 after he lost a civil lawsuit for allegedly “exposing himself and rubbing against [a woman] despite being told repeatedly to stop.”  Whattayagot Mizzou?
• Air Force head man Jeff Reynolds earned a five-year extension today after his scintillating 16-14 first season.  To be fair, last year was one of the best first seasons from a new coach in the history of AFA’s program.

We’re heading into the middle of September already, literally thirty days until Midnight Madness, and the first batch of preseason mags are already proliferating on B&N shelves like West Virginians on crystal meth at a swap meet (no offense intended to the West Virginians not on crystal meth, of course). We know many of our readers are asking, “what’s a magazine?” To which we reply, “it’s what old people read while they’re on the toilet.” For our few readers here over 30 (present company excluded), we offer the first installment of our continuing series of reviews of the preseason magazines.

First in line: Athlon Sports.

I. Covers (5 pts) – are they cool? inclusive?

• 34 regional covers seems like overkill, but we suppose having a Minnesota/Iowa/Iowa St. cover matters to someone.
• Coolest Cover – for some reason, we particularly like the elated yet menacing look Patrick Beverly gives the camera on the Arkansas edition.
• Say What? Athlon’s UCLA/USC cover (above) features Kevin Love and OJ Mayo in their Burger Boy unis – was it really too much trouble to shoot them with their correct jerseys on?
• Total Points = 4

II. Ease of Use (5 pts) – how hard is it to find confs/teams?

• Conferences and teams are arranged alphabetically, allowing for quick navigation assuming you know your conference.
• Standard format otherwise – features & predictions; analysis of teams; recruiting, in that order.
• Total Points = 4

III. Roundup (10 pts) – every mag has one – tell us something new!

• 10 Things to Watch is ok, but we didn’t learn anything new (i.e., the Pac-10 is great, keep an eye on Love/Mayo/Gordon, etc.).
• Hoops Madness is a little better, mostly because of its lists of emerging stars (hot sophs to watch), top transfers and coaches on the hot seat. Also enjoyed learning that Dayton’s band has become the band by proxy for the Niagara Purple Aces (since NU doesn’t have one).
• Cool Stat Award. Memo to Adam Lonon (VMI) – shoot more! (31 starts, 26 FGs)
• Total Points = 5

IV. Features (15 pts) – give us some insightful and unique storylines.

• Next Generation is a decent article about the young brigade of coaches who have been successful so far (Donovan, Matta, JT3, Howland, etc.). It wasn’t unique, as we expect to see a lot of this in the rags this year.
• The Fix relates the story of the Tulane pointshaving scandal two decades ago. Although the article briefly mentions the Tim Donaghy story, it focuses primarily (and misguidedly) on the people involved in the scandal. What we needed to see here was an article about the existence of gambling among college athletes and efforts to prevent it. Big swing & miss here.
• The Scoop is three one-page interviews with Ronald Steele (Alabama), Bill Walker (Kansas St.) and Drew Neitzel (Michigan St.), none of which are very interesting.
• Total Points = 5

V. Predictions (20 pts) – how safe are their picks? do they take any chances? are they biased toward the big boys?

• Athlon uses the 65-team prediction model, eschewing the traditional Top 25 (they get pts for that). But Athlon goes waaaaaaaaay safe by predicting six of the elite eight the same as 2007 (Georgetown, Kansas, Memphis, UNC, Oregon, UCLA with Louisville and Tennessee added for good measure). UCLA defeats Carolina in the championship.
• Big Conference Bias. 15 of its Sweet 16 are from BCS conferences – highly doubtful and incredibly LAME! NCAA Bids – ACC (5), Big Ten (5), Big 12 (5), Big East (9), Pac-10 (7), SEC (6).
• Mid-Major Watch. Only Memphis from a mid-major conference (CUSA) into the Sweet 16. Mid-Major bids – 2 CAA (George Mason, VCU), 2 MVC (Bradley, S. Illinois), 1 A10 (Xavier), 1 Mountain West (BYU), 1 WAC (Nevada). We’ll bet anything Athlon’s editors choose that those six conferences will get more than eight bids next March.
• All-Americans. Athlon really likes Drew Neitzel for some reason. He joins Psycho T, Chris Lofton, Roy Hibbert and Darren Collison (?) on their first team. They took a big flier on putting oft-injured Ronald Steele on the third team.
• Boldest Prediction. It’s sad that we had to dig this deep to find it, but it’s probably their pick for Cornell to win the Ivy League over Penn & Princeton. The last time a team other than those two won the Ivy Championship was in 1988 with (guess who?) Cornell.
• Total Points = 10

VI. Conference Pages (5 pts) – as a primer for the conference, how much can we learn here?

• The major conferences get a predicted order of finish, a brief recruiting roundup, and three teams of all-conference selections plus a “superlatives” section, which is fairly weak compared to others we’ve seen (POY, DPOY, most underrated, newcomer).
• The mid-major and small conferences only get a predicted order of finish, one team of all-conference selections and an all-time NCAA Tourney stat for the conference (which is interesting).
• Total Points = 2.5

VII. Team Pages (20 pts) – how in-depth is the analysis? where does it come from? is it timely and insightful given this year’s squad or is it just a rundown of last year’s achievements?

• All major conference and projected mid-major NCAA Tournament teams get a full page of analysis, including evaluations of the frontcourt and backcourt as well as a team roster (w/ stats) and a team-oriented stat.
• Non-NCAA Tournament mid-majors and low majors get at most a half-page analysis and roster, but most only get a paragraph with a very brief synopsis.
• Clearly much of the analysis is based on what coach’s interviews, which results in analyses from “glass half full” perspective. We would have liked to have seen more contrarian viewpoints.
• The depth of analysis is solid if not spectacular for the major conference teams, but largely lacking for the others.
• Total Points = 14

VIII. Recruiting (5 pts) – we want to know who the top players are coming into college bball, where they’re going and who to watch for next year.

• Four pages of recruiting information, including the top 100 (Scout.com) of 2007, the next 200 players, and the top 20 by position. Solid raw data.
• It also includes the top 25 classes, but only as a list, with no additional details.
• The top 100 in the class of 2008, top 25 in 2009 and top 10 in 2010 are also listed.
• Total Points = 3

IX. Title IX Guilt (aka Chick Ball) (5 pts) – the less the better…

• Only two pages worth, and at the very back of the magazine.
• Total Points = 5

X. Intangibles (15 pts) – what’s good and bad about the magazine as a whole?

• In the past, Athlon’s mag hasn’t always looked as professional as some of the others. This is no longer the case. Its layout looks great, the photos and graphics are solid, and the writing has improved.
• Because it comes out so early, the advantage it gains in being one of the first published is mitigated by other temporal factors. Most notably, there are no schedules within the magazine – for that reason alone, Athlon cannot be your “go-to” preview issue during the season.
• Additionally, its early publish date means that it misses late summer news involving injuries, transfers and coaching changes. While they did get the Skip Prosser news in there, they did not, for example, consider how Andy Rautins’ knee injury will impact Syracuse.
• As a nontraditional magazine (i.e., not Street & Smith or TSN), Athlon should have taken more risks with their predictions – going all chalk won’t separate it from the pack.
• Total Points = 8

RTC Grade for Athlon = 60.5 pts

Basis: Athlon is on the lower side of quality with the preseason magazines, but they have gotten better, and there is some value in their analysis. Its best use (given its early arrival on the newstand) is simply to refamiliarize yourself with the names and faces of the upcoming season. We wouldn’t recognize purchasing it unless you simply cannot wait for the better ones to come out.

Grading Scale:

• 90-100 pts – exceptional quality in all areas – must buy and keep on-hand all season!
• 80-89 pts – very good quality mag – worthy of purchasing and reading cover-to-cover
• 70-79 pts – average, run of the mill magazine – some value in certain areas but weak in others – tough call as to whether to purchase it
• 60-69 pts – magazine on the weaker side, but may still have some positive attributes – probably not worth the money, though
• 0-59 pts – such a low quality magazine that it’s not worth any more than the five minutes you thumbed through it at the store