Bears hibernate. Football fans estivate – the summer equivalent of taking a long nap in the snow. But instead of shutting their systems down during the offseason, sharp handicappers are learning about what’s on tap for 2008.

You can’t throw a virtual brick without hitting a web page dedicated to college football. Even conventional sources like ESPN and FOX provide their readers with useful content – it might be buried under headline stories about the crazy things that happen in dorms, but the Web leaves plenty of room for those niche stories about what’s happening on the field.

We’ve just been through a very informative glut of spring practices. Players and prospective players from across Division I took to the gridiron in April; their progress was documented more heavily this year than ever before, driven in part by the handicapper’s thirst for information. By studying this information now, a sharp capper will start the 2008 college football season with a sizeable knowledge gap over the betting public.