It’s like a little slice of Christmas morning for college football geeks: Phil Steele’s college football annual is on the newsstands. The thing is garish from a design standpoint, rather crudely written and put together and not cheap ($8.95), but this guy’s working too hard at compiling and analyzing information to worry about the fancy stuff.
It’s essentially 120 media guides, which is why its beloved by people who cover the sport. It’s 328 pages almost comically packed with information in tiny type, with obscure abbreviations (VHT=Very Highly Touted; SOD=Stopped on Downs, etc.), and it’s mostly good, legit information. I can’t believe how hard this guy must work. Support him.
One tiny criticism I would have of Phil (other than that he no longer sends me a free copy) is he tends to slightly overrate the Big Ten and Notre Dame, which he has ranked 7th (!) nationally. With that caveat, he has Penn State ranked fifth nationally (behind Florida, Texas, USC and Oklahoma) and considers them his No. 1 surprise team, which he bases on the apparent reality that the Nits are not going to be in many, if any, preseason top 10s. It should be noted that Steele does better preseason predictions than anybody, which he goes to considerable lengths to point out.
Steele has Evan Royster No. 8 (out of eight) among his Heisman Trophy favorites and Darryl Clark among 11 Heisman contenders.
He also has Penn State’s schedule ranked 72nd of 120. There’s probably a connection there.
