This is going to seem like a shameless plug, but I assure you that it’s sincere. ESPN is coming out with the premiere issue of the ESPN Fantasy Football Guide. The fantasy team here gave out early copies in the office so I’ve been reading it over the past week or so. My feelings so far: It rocks!

Normally, even though I get the ESPN.com draft kits for free, I use The Sporting News Ultimate Draft Kit for one simple reason: it comes as PDFs that I can print out and take to my draft. The league I play in has an in person draft and ESPN.com’s Draft Kit offerings have traditionally been geared for viewing and using online. That doesn’t help me at the bar when the clock is ticking, so paper is the way to go. This year, I won’t be getting that but instead will be bring the magazine, tearing out the cheat sheet insert, and using that to organize my draft.

Can I also say that there’s nothing like reading about fantasy football to get you all excited for the start of fantasy football season. They should give these things out at pro sporting events to get more players to play and buy more teams. At this point of the year, all you want to do is draft… then draft again, then again… just to play out strategies. Maybe it’s time to organize a mock draft for NERFL? I can get a league setup online, I guess and we can just keep resetting it.

Anyway, I’m ready for football and because I’ve gotten the magazine so early, I’m already preparing (instead of my normal process of buying the draft kit the week before). I’ll probably still draft two kickers again or maybe two TE or something else equally silly, but at least I can feel like I tried.