Recruiting in the SEC is downright nasty. It is a cutthroat, cannibalistic big business that is microscopically analyzed by fans, administrators and media members alike. Recruiting in the SEC is unlike recruiting in any other league. And the team rankings bare that out in painful clarity. Well, painful if you are coaching in any other major conference.

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.

National Signing Day is just a few weeks away and six of the top 10 players in the Athlon Consensus 100 are still left uncommitted. In fact, 14 of the top 100 still have yet to make the most important decision in their life. The team, conference and national rankings will be shifting and moving all the way through National Signing Day 2013.

With Alabama’s convincing victory over Notre Dame in early January, the SEC ran its streak of consecutive national champions to seven. The bad news for the competition? The SEC isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s bigger and better than ever. Texas A&M is a program on the rise after winning 11 games in its first season in the conference, while quarterback Johnny Manziel claimed the 2012 Heisman Trophy.

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.

Vanderbilt enters postseason play riding a six-game winning streak — the longest at the school since 1955. The Commodores are also playing in a bowl game in consecutive seasons for the first time ever. It’s safe to say that James Franklin is getting things done in Nashville.

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-SEC team.

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

2012 Offensive All-SEC Team as Recruits

College football's bowl season begins on Saturday with the New Mexico Bowl and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. Here are predictions on the first 14 bowl games. 

Single-game, single-season and career records. School, conference and national benchmarks. Remarkable performances and embarrassing moments. The good, bad and ugly makes college football the great sport that it is today. Here are the 20 most intriguing, most important and most interesting college football stats of the 2012 season: