The college football media guides started arriving last week.

Ole Miss was the first one to land on my desk, complete with a smiling Houston Nutt kneeling in front of the Walk of Champions sign on the cover.

The Conference USA media guide was the next to arrive, followed by Southern Miss and Georgia Tech.

As I flipped through the pages that were filled with hope and encouragement that this season would bring success, my mind thought of one thing — football season has arrived.

The purpose of a media guide is to give members of the media all the information they need to accurately report on the team.

However, they serve a bigger purpose than that. They give fans fresh hope that this season will be better than the one before.

Media guides can say a lot about a program and how it’s run.

Sports information departments take pride in putting out the best, most professional media guide they can. Doing so gives the school more credibility than it would have if they had just thrown something together.

I love flipping through page after page of statistics, biographies and history of the football programs.

I love reading about the former bowl games the team played in, how their stadium is “one of the finest in the nation,” and about who the leading passer was in 1974.

I also find the cover of the media guides to be quite intreaguing.

I couldn’t help but notice that the three team media guides I received so far have all featured the head coach very prominently on the cover.

In Ole Miss and Georgia Tech’s case, the head coach was the only person on the cover. On the Southern Miss media guide, coach Larry Fedora’s picture dwarfs the picture of players Gerald McRath and Damion Fletcher.

Not surprisingly, all three of the schools have new head coaches this year after firing their former coaches.

Nutt takes over for Ed Orgeron while Fedora takes over for Jeff Bower and Paul Johnson replaces Chan Gailey at Georgia Tech.

The message the school wants to convey is “Take a good look fans. This is the guy who will carry us to the promised land.”

A stark contrast to that was last year’s Mississippi State media guide.

The cover was stark white with a picture of an arm holding up a MSU football helmet, as players do in the seconds before the ball is kicked off to start a game.

The message that seemed to convey was that MSU had a true team atmosphere with no stars — or coaches — that are bigger than the team. All that matters is Mississippi State.

The theme seemed to carry throughout the season, as the Bulldogs pulled off several upsets on their way to an 8-5 season and Liberty Bowl victory.

So while lots of schoolchildren have their summer reading assignments, mine just started being mailed to the office last week.

So if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to find a comfortable chair, curl up with a blanket and start reading about Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.

Jeff Edwards is the sports editor for The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3632 or jeff.edwards@natchezdemocrat.com