When I was a kid, one of the best parts of the summer were the three or four weekends my family would spend at our fishing cabin on East Lake.

I've never claimed to be a fisherman, but there really is nothing like lucking on to a cypress knee in which a school of bream has claimed as their own.

I once remember catching around 60 eating-size bream with my dad and brother in about a three-hour span one morning.

We were literally pulling them in about as quick as our corks and crickets hit the water. I honestly believe that fishing trip spoiled me on the sport because never before nor ever since have I had as much fun with a fishing pole in my hand.

But, trips to the cabin also left a lot of time for reading, and while I read my fair share of comic books on those trips what I enjoyed perusing most were the summer college football magazines.

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Athlon's annual usually hit the stands first with its glossy cover and snazzy art. Dave Campbell's Arkansas Football was next and I liked it better because it generally had more Razorbacks material, zeroed in on the Southwest Conference and also included a paragraph or two on my hometown West Memphis Blue Devils.

In July, the Sporting News' preview came out and it was good, but by then the stories seemed a bit recycled, but hey at the age of 10 or 11 what was I going to read, " War and Peace ?"

In August, I would routinely begin checking our home mailbox around 10 each morning, hoping the postman would have left us the latest version of Arkansas' football press guide.

The first ones I remember seeing were long and rectangular, the perfect size to carry in your back pocket. Then in the mid to late 1970 s, Arkansas' press guides were about the size of a Reader's Digest.

I thought it was really clever when the 1978 guide was actually designed to look like a TV Guide with little portraits of such as Hogs as Ron Calcagni, Dan Hampton and Ben Cowins on the cover, to the best of my recollection.

While I never made an " A" in school until I got to junior high and realized school would be a lot less of a hassle if I would just do my homework, I had much of those press guides memorized before the Hogs ever played their first game.

Back in the'70 s, most colleges generally didn't play their first game until the second weekend in September, so Sports Illustrated's college football issue didn't come out until late August or even the first week of September.

I remember the day the 1978 edition arrived and, lo and behold, Arkansas head coach Lou Holtz, quarterback Calcagni and halfback Cowins were on the cover and the Hogs were ranked No. 1 in SI's preseason poll. This, of course, came off the strength of the Razorbacks' 31-6 blowout of No. 3 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.

Back then, SI didn't regionalize its covers like today. Everybody who bought the preview - whether through subscription or on the newsstand - got a copy that fea- tured the Razorbacks on the cover.

The next year, I was expecting similar treatment for the Hogs from SI, but my little 10-year-old mind didn't quite get the fact that not everybody in the nation liked the Razorbacks as much as I did.

As I grew older and became a daily newspaper reader instead of an occasional one, I grew less enamored with the preview magazines.

I began to realize much if not all of the information in the preview magazines had already been reported in the state newspapers by Orville Henry, Nate Allen, Bob Holt or Wally Hall. Still in West Memphis at the time, I didn't have access to the Northwest Arkansas Times or The Springdale News, but I'm sure those papers had reported most if not all of the info, too.

Later when I got into the newspaper business and learned what deadlines were, I realized all those stories I had been reading each year in June and July were written in April or May and were as stale as two-day-old donuts.

Today, deadlines on such magazines are a bit closer to publication date, but the Razorbacks info found in them remains a boileddown summary of what was reported in the spring.

It doesn't make the stories any less informative for the casual fan or less entertaining to any fan, but it's just the way it is.

However, old habits die hard.

Despite the fact I know the info contained in these magazines has already been reported and is readily available to me at the click, clack of a google search, I have a hard time not buying them.

I have to intentionally keep myself away from Wal-Mart, Hastings and Barnes & Noble this time of year, or I'll pick up a half-dozen or so of these magazines during the course of the summer. On a journalist's wages, I simply can't afford that.

So this is a warning to you parents out there to monitor your children's summer reading material closely.

If your child has his or her nose tucked into too many football preview mags or sports Web sites, or if he or she begins to memorize the depth charts and other sports facts, quickly find him or her some other reading material or even a video game to play.

If you don't act quickly and resolutely, your child may just grow up to be a sports writer or, Heaven forbid, a sports blogger.

And that's enough to scare anyone.

Terry J. Wood is the sports editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times.