I had an email exchange with one of our readers last week that I would like to share with you. The exchange started when he asked me “ …. during your downtime …..”

“Downtime?” I responded. “I am already hard at work gathering information for our 2014 PAC 12 Betting Prospectus (which I am).”

This prompted the following excellent email and question(s) from our longtime reader and subscriber Dennis H:

[box] Okay Pez, another request. How about you and the rest of your team break down the steps in preseason research and preparation.

Give the steps A to Z that your cappers use and what to look for. Any preseason power rating work or grades? In plain talk I want to do my own research and prep. I’d like to know how you guys go about it.

How does your team of cappers handle recruiting? What are they looking for?

In the spring sessions, what is your team of cappers looking for? In the spring sessions how can they get an idea of the coaching staff? Tell how to see how the coaching staff is going to handle personnel? How do you grade the team’s depth and hallmark players coming in from looking at spring sessions? What are we to look for in the spring sessions on any changes to defensive and offensive schemes?

Prior to the season as you scope out team websites and various online sports pages, such as ESPN and Fox Sports, for reports on the spring workouts and camps. What to look for in these sites? Which sites are useful?

How does your team keep a log of injuries, suspensions, transfers and other business that causes the absence of key personnel on each team?[/box]

My initial thought after reading this email was WOW! That is definitely one of the most thorough questions I have ever received.

My second thought was that Dennis isn’t just asking me the question, but the entire TSE capping team, so hopefully GS, Sabert, Trent and Maggiore can add some additional information in the comments section, and/or write an entirely separate article on the subject.

Anyhow, let’s jump into Dennis’ questions and I will explain how I go about preparing for the upcoming college football season.

My main emphasis this time of year is pretty simple: READ! I probably spend half the day reading as much information as I can on individual teams and conferences. I bookmark all the articles that I believe I can use to help me write the Betting Prospectuses and I also copy & paste any small pieces of information into separate team Word documents.

For example, today I copy & pasted the following piece of information on Cal:

“Because you’re right. For as much as the Bears were able to move the ball, they were last in the league in scoring offense (23 points per game). Let’s not also forget that they were last in scoring defense as well (45.9 points per game), so the problems weren’t just on the offensive side of the ball.”

I’ll address the specific websites I use to gather my information below, but reading is probably how I spend 75% of my pre-season preparation time.

Recruiting & Spring Football

As for recruiting I really don’t spend that much time on the subject. Other than following all the news on Twitter on NSD ….. ASU hauled in a top 20 class BTW …. I just don’t allocate much of my preparation time to recruiting. Mainly because at this point we really don’t know which true freshmen, or even JC transfers, are going to have much of an impact come fall.

However, if you want some great information on recruiting, check out Dave Bartoo’s blog at CFBMatrix.com. It is loaded with some great recruiting info, including 5 and 10 year composites. It also has some info on returning starters for this upcoming season.

Of course spring football is really when the information starts heating up and we begin to get bombarded with articles on the next big-time player or how Team A’s offense has really stepped it up this Spring ….. blah, blah, blah.

I really try not to get carried away with all the spring media hype, after all for all the Jameis Winston’s that are being hyped in spring as the next big thing, there are probably another dozen (or more) players that do not live up to the hype. Some of them don’t even see the field in fall after having “outstanding” springs.

The main thing I try and do during the spring is “read between the lines” of what is being said by the coaches and the team beat writer. Sometimes things are very obvious …. no one has taken control of the QB position yet; we have a lot of athleticism at the LB position this year, but we’re inexperienced; our offensive line has a lot of experience and we’re finally healthy this spring.

Sometimes things aren’t so obvious and sometimes not even the coaches know (or they aren’t saying). For example, I don’t recall Johnny Manziel getting much, if any hype coming out of spring two years ago. In fact I believe he was supposedly in a QB battle heading into fall. Whereas we all had a pretty good idea that Jameis Winston was going to be a game changer from the get go.

I guess I try and error on the side of caution and take a wait and see approach with a lot of these players that have terrific springs.

New Coaches & Schemes

As for new coaches and schemes, I hate to sound like a broken record, but read, read, read …. and take everything you read with a grain of salt.

I am always cautious when a team is installing a new offensive or defensive scheme. It seems that more often than not it takes some time (sometimes an entire season) before the new scheme starts to show any type of improvement.

Other times the new coach or coordinator might be a huge improvement over the previous one. Sometimes as a capper you have a good idea which changes will be beneficial, other times you won’t.

For example, last year I had a pretty good idea that USC’s new defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast, and the new schemes he was installing, was going to be an improvement over Monte Kiffin. Pendergast brought a lot of PAC 12 experience to the table and he also inherited an experienced and talented group of players. Improvement was inevitable.

Injuries, suspensions, transfers, etc

As far as injuries, suspensions, transfers, etc., I personally do not keep a “log” of each and every one of these items. Obviously if it is a PAC 12 school or any of the other teams/conferences I am writing the preseason prospectus for, then I will have it written down in my notes.

Suspensions particularly are usually pretty tough to get a handle on. Most of the time they are pretty meaningless, therefore I am usually aware of them, but don’t put a lot of stock in them.

For example, UDUB’s heir apparent at QB, Cyler Miles and wide receiver Damore’ea Stringfellow were indefinitely suspended last week after reportedly attacking some people after the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl (I guess Cyler & Damore’ea were Bronco fans). Of course we don’t know what really happened, and in a lot of these cases, nothing serious will happen to the players involved.

So as a capper preparing for next season this really doesn’t concern me at this point. However it is something I am aware of and will be keeping tabs on. If these two players remain suspended for spring practice, that would raise a red flag. If they remained suspended throughout the summer and fall practice, then their certainly would be reason for concern.

Reading Material

Last but certainly not least, let’s address the reading material I use to prepare for the upcoming college football season. I’ll be brief here because I believe I can and will write an entire post covering this subject next week. In fact I did write a “Top 10 College Football Betting Resources” guide a few years ago, but it needs to be updated because several of the sites are no longer available.

At the moment, pre-spring, I read ESPN College Football, individual SB Nation team sites (for example: House of Sparky for ASU info), and CFBStats.com to put together all the production numbers for the prospectuses.

I also have a ton of Twitter feeds on my Tweetdeck which I have separated into columns for individual conferences and general college football info. So any of you who follows @saturdayedge will see several retweets on a daily basis of college football articles, stats, projections, etc.

That is pretty much it for now. The thing I like most about ESPN is they post daily “Lunch Links” for all of the major conferences. So you can read about team and conference information from a variety of sources.

As spring practices commence throughout the country I will increase my daily reading sources as more information becomes available at that time.

I will also start putting together our spring previews here on the site. I personally love some of the info we are able to gather because it is coming directly from sources that are really knowledgeable about each school (though you also have to take into account the “homer” effect of what they are saying), and there is always some great insight and a few gambling nuggets to be gleaned that isn’t available elsewhere.

Conclusion

Once all the schools have finished up their spring practices, you should have a pretty good “baseline” from which to evaluate each team. Not much is going to change from the end of spring to the beginning of fall practice.

I hope this info helps everyone who wants to prepare for the upcoming college football season, and I would also be interested and appreciative if you would add to the conversation in the comment section below. Let me know some of the things you guys do to prepare for the season and what are some of the websites and magazines you monitor for preseason information.

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