Hey fantasy football winners I hope you haven’t drafted your team yet—because there’s still plenty of pre-season to go before you get serious about committing to your 2006 roster.  To help you with your draft day the football intelligentsia produces a bewildering array of magazines to choose from – but which is right for you?  This series of articles is intended to help.

We’ve included a summary of the magazine’s content, speculation on it’s intended audience and even counted the number of sexy ads in each one (in case that’s a factor in your decision – one way or another.)  Ultimately I hope that the guide you choose is the right one for you. Today we take a look at Fantasy Football Weekly 2006 Annual Guide.

Hey fantasy football winners I hope you haven’t drafted your team yet—because there’s still plenty of pre-season to go before you get serious about committing to your 2006 roster.  To help you with your draft day the football intelligentsia produces a bewildering array of magazines to choose from – but which is right for you?  This series of articles is intended to help.

I’ve included a summary of the magazine’s content, speculation on it’s intended audience and even counted the number of sexy ads in each one (in case that’s a factor in your decision – one way or another.)  Ultimately I hope that the guide you choose is the right one for you.

Fantasy Football Weekly 2006 Annual Guide
Fanball
Edited by John Tuvey, Ted Carlson
$7.99 US, 178 pages, fifteen sexy ads.  Cover features Steve Smith.

This light-hearted magazine borrows Will Ferrell’s “more cowbell” to describe itself as dense with content.  It relegates its fantasy football basics section to a downloadable extra to make more room for analysis and coverage.  (You can check out their Fantasy Football 101 kit for free on their web page.)  I agree—it does cover a lot of ground in 178 pages.

Beginning with a section called Against the Grain (which refutes conventional wisdom on a number of players) Fantasy Football Weekly aims to be a Contrarian’s delight.  It tries to make you laugh as it moves through Sleepers, Busts and Rookies to the top 100 rankings – and often succeeds.  There is a single page of matchup advice, several pages of draft day advice and four Mock Drafts (two S-drafts and 2 auction drafts.)

It includes six Cheat Sheets to account for a variety of scoring systems and even keeper leagues.  Suggested auction prices are included on most for maximum flexibility.  In addition it has Cheat Sheets for Whole Team Defense and Individual Defensive Players.

The players’ sections are brief and colorful.  Each one begins with a staff “top ten” so you can compare different points of view.  Players are listed by overall ranking.  Some players get special attention – extra coverage where the staff thinks it’s appropriate.  Team coverage is alphabetical, brief and statistic heavy.  Rounding out the magazine are schedules and stats.

I enjoyed reading this one – it’s very entertainingly written.  This is a Fantasy Football magazine for fans of Maxim – the sense of humor is very similar.  The advice seems solid despite its irreverent presentation.  It’s mostly going to be of use to you leading up to draft day – there’s not much here to help you through the season.  The downloadable guide to Fantasy Football is a potentially a big help for beginners.  Recommended.

That’s it for now.  Check back soon for the next installment, and remember to always take two Running Backs in the first three rounds.  Always.