For more than 7 years I have published an “Experience Chart” in my National College Football Preview. The old version of this chart just took into account the overall experience from the 2 deep for each squad. Last year I revised the Experience Chart and created a New and Improved version. The new chart uses 20% of the experience grade from the old chart, 20% from the % of lettermen returning, 20% from the % of tackles returning, 20% from the % of yards returning and 20% from the career starts of the offensive line.

The most experienced teams when using the old chart were usually the service academies which play a lot of seniors and juniors. Using the old method (which is listed below) the top 5 most experienced teams in terms of upperclassmen in the two deep are: 1. Hawaii 2. Navy 2. Army 4. UAB and 5. Air Force. Iowa St ranks the highest among BCS teams coming in at #10. Read more…

The TRUCK IS HERE! That signals the “official” start of the College Football season when you have your Phil Steele College Football Preview in your hands.

To all of you who purchased the magazine over the winter and spring, we dropped your magazines in the envelopes today and they were the first ones out the door this morning! Read more…

It is finally confirmed, the truck will be here bright and early on Tuesday, June 1st! That signals the “official” start of the College Football season when you have your Phil Steele College Football Preview in your hands. Way back on Thursday May 13th we sent the final pages to the printer for this years 2010 Phil Steele’s College Football Preview. The magazine was printed, bound and then put into boxes and stacked onto pallets. And as I type this the pallets are being loaded onto trucks and will be heading off to the newsstands and book stores around the country and a shipment will be sent to our office. Read more…

Today’s blog includes all of my Magazine Covers with the exception of the National Cover.

Making a magazine cover has always been a big deal for college players all the way back to the old Street & Smith days which featured the top players without their face masks. Every year I have 10 different covers that I ship out to different parts of the United States so you can pick up a mag with your favorite player in that region on it.

While most magazines break down their covers by conference, I feel my covers separate themselves as I produce special Florida, Texas and Alabama/Auburn covers. Also I am the only magazine that has a Armed Forces cover which this year features all the quarterbacks.

Some highlights on covers this year are two non-BCS players making the desired spot: Boise St’s QB Kellen Moore is featured on the Pac-10 cover while TCU’s QB Andy Dalton makes the Texas cover. Also Georgia WR AJ Green, West Virginia RB Noel Devine and Florida St QB Christian Ponder made a cover for the second year in a row. Check out all the covers below and download the PDF version if you would like a print out.

Read more…

Now that the magazine is sent off to the publisher we will be featuring a blog every day Monday thru Friday and a weekend blog now until the start of football season!

It was a rough magazine season as we wanted to get the magazine off to the printers on Tuesday and did not get it done until yesterday afternoon. We will now be focusing our attention to the regional magazines and the NFL magazine.

            Last year we put a full color NFL magazine onto the newsstands for the first time and it exceeded my expectations picking 7 of the 8 division winners correctly and we were the ONLY National Preview to pick the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints to win the NFC South with all others picking Atlanta or Carolina!

  Read more…

Well here it is, my projected AP Top 10 for next year as of February 1, 2010! I will mention it now and I will mention it numerous times throughout today’s blog but this is not MY preseason Top 10 for next year, it is where I project the AP Top 10 to come out at the start of the season.

Last year my projected Top 10 for the AP Poll was #1 Florida, #2 Texas, #3 USC, #4 Oklahoma, #5 Alabama, #6 Virginia Tech, #7 LSU, #8 Oklahoma St, #9 Ohio St and #10 Mississippi. The actual AP Top 25 was #1 Florida, #2 Texas, #3 Oklahoma, #4 USC, #5 Alabama, #6 Ohio St, #7 Virginia Tech, #8 Mississippi and#9 was a tie between Oklahoma St/Penn St.

I nailed nine of the ten teams that appeared in the Preseason Top 10 with the only exception being LSU/Penn St and I may have had something to do with that. It’s interesting to note that of the main preseason magazines, only two had Penn St ranked in the Top 10 and I had them my #1 surprise team and ranked #5. Most had Penn St out of the Top 10. Perhaps since I had them rated so high in my magazine, it influenced a few voters across the country, bumping them into the Top 10.

Now let’s take a look at this year’s projected Preseason AP Top 10: Read more…