This time of year is brutal for football collectors, you are waiting for the football season to start, and you have to wade through some of the worst products released each season. Luckily this year, it hasn’t been horrible, but sets like Prestige and some of the other unlicensed products, have almost made me want to get in a time machine and travel forward three months to avoid the pain. July cant come fast enough, and that’s only the beginning. Here is a look forward at some of the highlights and lowlights of the coming months.

June

Upper Deck Sweet Spot (6/21) – I am not a fan of this year’s Sweet Spot design, even less so with a lack of NFL licensing. Its going to have a very deep checklist from the looks of it, and that can be very discouraging for rip and flip wax busters. For people who collect college stuff, it looks to be a great product.

Panini Elite (6/22) – Elite looks like it may be the last product of June if it comes out on time, and I could not be any less excited for these hideous cards. It will sell regardless because it’s the first NFL Uniform set of the year, but the effort that went into this failure of a rehashed 2010 Elite product is laughable.

July

Score Football (7/6) – Although a lot of people enjoy the low end nature of this product, for someone like me, I rarely even recognize it as part of the calendar. Panini chose a retro design this year that looks pretty damn good, but in most cases, the value is more in busting this in bulk than buying singles off ebay.

Topps Inception (7/12) – Ahhhh, here we go, the beginning of the meat of the 2011 calendar. I will be doing a few boxes for me, and most likely a case for the site, as this stuff looks absolutely amazing. It features those AWESOME cards that were previewed at the premiere, and has lots of other cool cards to help it. This will be the first Topps product with rookie premiere swatches for the collectors that like that stuff, ill be sitting on the singles and spending a lot of money buying them.

Panini Rookies and Stars (7/27) – This set is so bad, that Panini has no issues with it going up against a product like the one below it. If there is one set during the course of the year that needs the axe, its this one. Im not even talking about re-doing it. Just get rid of it. Panini has obviously lost confidence in it, I definitely did around 4 or 5 years ago.

Topps Football Jumbo and Hobby (7/28) – This is the first major product of the year, and it is looking amazing this year. They have a great design, as well as some great looking added content to the normal base set, so I will most likely jump in looking to make a splash with the high end singles. If you havent pre-ordered yet, I would, this is a FUN product to bust in bulk and as a box at a time.

August

Topps Finest Football (8/17) – I love the look of this year’s finest, and as we have seen in the previews, they are offering on card rookie sigs for the first time ever I believe. This set was a contender for product of the year last year, and this year, it should be no different. Ill be in for a few boxes at least, just like last year, moreso now that the patch autos have been redesigned for better looks and content.

September

Topps Platinum Football (9/7) – The design for Platinum this year has been relatively polarizing, but I am in the group that thinks most of the cards look great. Topps has gone and added more hard signed content for this product as well, and so for this reason, I don’t even need to consider buying any Panini sticker dump products. I think Platinum will do as well as it ever has with this heap of added content, and it will be the first in a long second half calendar of awesomely designed Topps products.

Undetermined

Topps Chrome Football (Most likely August or Sept) – I love me some chrome football, and I have waited years for some semblance of on card signatures. Now that they are here, preceded by a great design from Topps Flagship, this will be a banner year for Chrome. I would say that adding in the Bowman Chrome style refractor configuration will be that much more of a reason to buy as well, so be prepared for awesomeness.

Its easy to see that Topps is gearing up for a ridiculously awesome year while Panini falls on its face. Funny thing is, we havent even seen the big ones from Topps, yet, either. I assume as we get more info on Certified and Limited, as well as some of the other stuff that clogs Panini’s mid year, we will see the gap between the companies widen. Topps has already done more in their BEGINNING year sets than Panini will likely do in their ENTIRE year, so its clearly obvious how much 2011 will be the year of Topps.