Preseason prognosticators like Athlon Sports — the most accurate college football preview magazine on newsstands — use many things to attempt to predict what the coming football season will look like.

Recruiting rankings are an inexact science, and even the experts will admit that. It is virtually impossible to measure heart, work ethic, mental focus and self-awareness in 17- and 18-year-old kids. Especially, in the face of the most important decision they will ever make.

2013 is shaping up to be an interesting year in the Big 12. Kansas State claimed the conference title in 2012, but a new champion should be expected next season. Oklahoma tied the Wildcats for the Big 12’s top spot, but the Sooners must replace quarterback Landry Jones, as well as a handful of key defenders. The Wildcats face similar problems, but coach Bill Snyder will find a way for K-State to stay in the hunt.

It is never too early to start looking ahead to next season. Especially now that Alabama is college football’s 2012 National Champion. This season featured huge showdowns between the ACC and SEC at the end of the year, Notre Dame battling with the Big Ten or Pac-12 all season long and a host of other important non-conference showdowns. Each and every year, a variety of intersectional matchups mold the national championship landscape or add a chapter to long and storied rivalries.

Athlon Sports starts marking up the 2013 calendar with key non-conference games to watch:

The 2012 college football season ended the same way the last one did with Alabama and the SEC on top.

Teams who rose up and exceeded expectations, though, were among one of the major hallmarks of the year.

Alabama may be reveling in its second consecutive national championship, but college football fans everywhere else are turning their attention to recruiting and spring practice.

Those are just appetizers to the date everyone is really anticipating: The countdown for the 2013 season has begun. This is what you have to look forward to when the season reboots at the end of August.

All games on Saturday, Aug. 31 unless noted. Not all 2013 schedules are complete, so the following list is of games scheduled as of Jan. 7.

It only takes one penalty, one missed assignment or one yard for one loss to end a national championship. The 20 teams listed below came up just short of playing in the national championship game for one reason or another. Sometimes, off the field issues can impact whether or not a team plays in the BCS title game (see Ohio State this year). And in one historic case, a team did everything in its power to earn a trip to the big game only to be let down by a system without a true playoff. 

The bowl game in Tempe will be a last chance to build any sort of momentum for both Michigan State and TCU into 2013.

The Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl (formerly the Insight Bowl) puts together two teams that have not won back-to-back games since September. For Michigan State and TCU, the season has not gone entirely as planned.

The BCS is wrapping up its 15th season of action and Athlon Sports is continuing its series of BCS rankings. We ranked the best performances of each BCS bowl game and we ranked the best teams of each BCS conference. Now, we break down the top defensive units of the BCS era (1998-present).

The merits of recruiting rankings are debated in every sports bar and around every water cooler in the nation. Athlon continues its look at how each All-Conference team ranked as high school recruits with the first-team All-Big 12 team.

Related: College Football's 2012 All-American Team as Recruits

2012 Offensive All-Big 12 Team as Recruits