Football 2013: Preview Edition

Every year around Memorial Day, the football preview magazines start appearing on the shelves at the grocery stores. This week I picked up the first three I saw: The Sporting News and Athlon national previews, and Lindy's Southeastern Football.

All three magazines have six SEC teams ranked on their top 20 lists, although not in exactly the same order. Alabama is the consensus choice at number one, with the Aggies, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and LSU all ranked at positions 3-16, depending on who's doing the choosing. Here's how the six teams stack up, based on their average rating:

1. Alabama 1.000
2. South Carolina 5.666
3. Texas A&M 7.000
4. Georgia 7.333
5. Florida 9.666
6. Louisiana State 12.00

The only surprise for me was the respect South Carolina got from all three magazines, being ranked ahead of Florida on the three lists, and ahead of the Aggies and LSU on two. Ole Miss attracted attention with an average rating of 29.0, just outside the Top 25. Johnny Manziel was on the covers of all three issues, no surprise since he's a returning Heisman winner.

This should be an interesting season since the Aggies are ranked ahead of every other team on their schedule except the Crimson Tide. They replace 2012 SEC East opponent Florida with Vanderbilt, and swap Louisiana Tech (who gave them fits last year) for UTEP. With that schedule, it shouldn't be unrealistic to expect the Aggies to match last season's record, assuming that (a) Manziel stays healthy, and (b) the other SEC teams haven't figured him out yet.