I hate the ESPN Fantasy Football magazine. It’s slick. It’s colorful. It’s even more hip than Stuart Scott – without the izzel, shizzel, hizzel drivel that the talented sportscaster regularly pukes on his viewers. But, well, I still hate it.

Flip through the back of the magazine, and you’ll see some intriguing and unique stats from KC Joyner. Check out the team pages, and you’ll get a nice nugget on each NFL team’s red zone tendencies. Good stuff. So, I should love it, right? Wrong.

Maybe it’s because when I think of ESPN Fantasy Football, I think of Suzy Kolber picking the Steelers defense in the 4th round of their fantasy mock draft…or was it the 3rd round? Or I think of Sean Salisbury "mixing it up" on air with John Clayton. Kinda like watching two 70-year-old women in a bikini-clad cat fight. Just a bad visual, man.

But reading their 2010 ESPN fantasy football mag brings my queasiness to a new level. Even casually flipping through the player profiles it can be taxing to anyone who loves fantasy football.

Let’s start with the front cover. The upper right corner blares: "64 Surefire Sleepers." Ya’know, after most of last year’s "59 Can’t Miss Sleepers" unsurprisingly missed, you’d think maybe they’d tone it down. I guess the more sleepers you guess at, the greater the chance you have to be right. Ahh, but it gets better…

Let your eyes wander down the glossy cover and you’ll notice The Worldwide Leader’s "13 Inspired Tips To Winning It All." Look, they even put inspired Tip #1 on the cover for you: "Take Chris Johnson." (Wow! No kidding. Take Chris Johnson. Here is one of the top of my head: After you draft Chris Johnson, trade your 14th round pick for Vikings RB Adrian Peterson. Or how about this one: If you wanna win huge money, organize a fantasy football league in parts of Kenya where there is no knowledge of NFL football. Charge $25,000 per team. Bang – you’re in the money! I got a million fantasy football drafting tips just like it.)

The other 12 ESPN Fantasy Football mag tips can be found on page 11. For the most part they’re the Natty Light of fantasy football analysis – don’t take RBs over 30, get your handcuffs, start your studs. But one of them really caught my eye. Something I had never fathomed in all my years of drafting. Ken Daube – whose seldom used Twitter speaks only of lunches lost to meetings and computer role playing games – advises his readers to draft backups who play on the West Coast. The reasoning? NFL players that play late games are sometimes listed as questionable, so you should draft backups that also play late games just in case the starter’s injury puts him in jeopardy. And you know every league has the dope that’s gonna take everything too literally and end up with a team of Raiders, Seahawks and 49ers. We’re gonna advise against being that guy this year.

On page 58, they’ve pegged WR Michael Crabtree as a sleeper. Yes, that’s the same Michael Crabtree who was drafted 10th overall in 2008. And yes, that’s the same Michael Crabtree whose holdout, save for the Favre saga, was ESPN’s go to on a slow news day last summer. Hate to break it to you Bristol, but he’s not under anyone’s radar. You can point the finger at yourselves for that one.

I’ll be the first to admit, there is no sense in arguing another publication’s rankings – it’s about as constructive as a YouTube comment fight. But come on, you’re ranking players, why don’t you ya’know… rank them? Check it out -- on page 57 they have Vincent Jackson as the 10th ranked WR, Carolina’s Steve Smith at 11 and Greg Jennings at 12. Cool, certainly not unfeasible. But this is what I don’t get. They project Jackson for a 69-1201-8 stat line. Steve Smith for 70-1164-8 and Jennings for 80-1220-8. I’d give anything to be in the ESPN office pool. Heck, I’d give anything just to get a copy of their scoring system. Remember Kolber taking that Steelers D in the 4th round? I think it’s starting to make some sense.

But I think my favorite parts of this rag are these small subsections after each position ranking called "Injuries Atwitter." Stephania Bell, of Eric Kuselias home-wrecking fame, takes the three most important injuries to monitor this offseason at each position and dedicates no more than 140 characters to them. And that unintentionally makes them hilarious, as they read like haikus about groins and knee screws. But it also makes them completely useless cause they are entirely too cryptic. So you’re telling me Shayne Graham’s year "has to go better"? Insightful.

Ok, I have to admit, I tapped out after I got done with the player rankings. Couldn’t really read much more. I mean, ESPN Fantasy Football magazine profiles and ranks 77 QBs, 122 RBs, 125 WRs, 62 TEs and 38 (yes, 38) Ks… I get the feeling if they could have added CFL teams, they would have written 40 team defense profiles. Enough already.