(Final) Day in Previews (Sort of)

With the actual season snuggling up close and giving us the eye, it seems it's time to stop tending to the foreplay - e.g. the season previews. As much as I enjoy them, these will be the last batch of previews I post that don't speak exclusively to the games on tap for the coming weekend. From here to November, it's games, games, the time between games, and more games. And that will be good.

I will, however, be chucking out predictions on a weekly basis; that's just the way I am. (In a related note: does anyone know how to make PayPal work for a gambling pool...or is that illegal?).

By way of fond farewell, I'm going to throw a few, final efforts from people around the Blog-iverse. Climbing the Ladder turned in a Western Conference preview, to match the rundown of the East posted a day earlier. I may not agree with scaryice's calls, but know he wrapped his head around the questions before posting them; so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he got more right than me.

Another blog, Ben Olsen's Beard is taking a fresh approach to the preseason pundit's game: he's reviewing the teams as if the league operates on a single table. If you check the sidebar on his site, you can see where he is in the process (yikes - he posted the 9th-place team, Red Bull, just today; two days to go, man).

USSoccerplayers.com produced another "roundtable," this one looking at some big-picture issues like SuperLiga and how MLS scouts players. But they fit in this space because the four pundits at the table close with their predictions for 2007. I think only the first of the four is serious, and he ignores the question of who wins MLS Cup, but those are all good stabs (if a little safe).

But, to wrap this up proper, the best prognosticating item I've seen is Sports Illustrated's list of 13 players to watch in 2007. It's not so much the names you'd expect - Claudio Reyna, Amado Guevara, Christian Gomez, etc. - that make this worthwhile, as the names you don't: Jose Cancela, Jason Garey, Jose Burciaga Jr. I think Greg Lalas is on to something with most of these.

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