Media Credit: Northcoast Sports Phil Steele's College Football Preview magazing has become an accurate preseason source for college football fans.

With only 36 days left until the Longhorns take to the field for the 2007 football season, now is when most college football fans start researching and dissecting their team and the competition in a manner that would befit any intro biology class. And in the world of college football magazines, Phil Steele serves as the professor.

Steele created Phil Steele's College Football Preview 13 years ago after using various preseason magazines to compile data for his sports service business and finding that there simply wasn't enough information available.

Since originally hitting the shelves in 1994, Steele has been on a mission to bring fans the most complete season outlooks for all NCAA Division I schools.

"I just like to have information on top of information, and if there's a stat out there that I can squeeze into the magazine, I'll do it," Steele said. "It's like using 119 different media guides rolled into one."

The 2007 edition of the magazine is 328 pages of statistics and analysis interspersed with 143 abbreviations, allowing for the most possible information to be crammed into college football's unofficial textbook.

Steele writes virtually the entire magazine himself, spending around six months of countless hundred-hour work weeks each year to prepare his "labor of love" for publishing.

"Just having my name on a college football magazine is a real treat, because I've been a huge college football fan since I was 5 or 6 years old," Steele said. "I can't imagine myself doing anything else besides college football."

Every Saturday and Sunday, Steele sits in his Cleveland, Ohio, office staring at 12 television screens broadcasting various games from across the country, and either he or someone in his office takes notes and charts the play-by-play on every single game. In addition to weekends spent watching 12 games simultaneously, Steele spends numerous hours reading hundred-page reports accumulated by various staff members assigned to different conferences.

The facts and figures are then used to make up each team's two-page spread that logically organizes data into sections that include positional outlooks, projected starting lineups, top newcomers and "Phil's Forecast" for the season. Additionally, the team pages consist of upcoming and past schedules, statistical leaders and the squad's offensive and defensive units' averages. For many, the design can create a feeling of information overload.

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