- Sep 8, 2014
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Great read on Phil Steele and the 25th anniversary of his magazine. He may be off on a prediction or two, but annually his predictions and insight is the best in this business. Lindy's, Athlon's, Sporting News, etc are all trash compared to Steele:
Phil Steele vs. the internet: CFB's magazine maven won't ease up
Phil Steele vs. the internet: CFB's magazine maven won't ease up
Phil Steele, he of the college football preseason bible, wants to give me a quiz.
It’s Tuesday, June 25 and the 25th edition of “Phil Steele’s College Football Preview” magazine officially hit newsstands earlier this morning. Steele’s schedule for the day is a light 15 interviews; a stark departure from the seven-day-a-week writing grind during his publication push. In this moment, Steele’s responding to a question about his magazine’s place in the internet era. Specifically, where does his publication fit in a world that’s increasingly digital?
Steele pops off five questions in response: 1. Who is the starting left tackle for UCLA? 2. Three years ago Arizona played Hawaii, what was the final score and the spread? 3. Who was the leading rusher for Boise State last year? 4. Who does Tulsa play in Week 5? 5. What is the best rushing yards per game for Ohio State the last seven seasons?
He asks as a challenge. How long does it take to look up the answers on the internet vs. his magazine? Post-interview, 247Sports dived in. The final results may surprise you: Internet, 5:52 | Magazine, 3:20
“It’s still a quicker, easier reference than the internet,” Steele told 247Sports. “That’s the advantage we have.”
Filled with quirky abbreviations and sometimes tough-to-read type (small font, smaller margins), Steele’s magazine is distinct. It’s managed to emerge the last 25 years in what is a crowded preseason preview market. Look up during the college football doldrums of late June and early July, and you’ll find aggregation blurbs of Steele’s predictions and Twitter edits from college football programs celebrating Steele’s preseason all-conference nominees.
Steele, 59, estimates his magazine, if you include stats, featured over a million words in 2019; the totality of the Harry Potter series is 1,084,170 words. The eponymous publication has largely kept the same cramped layout for a quarter of a century. Steele prizes information above all.
Twenty-five years in, Steele is a mainstay in press boxes and on coffee tables alike. Not bad for a former print shop manager whose path toward a magazine essentially began on an irked whim.
“The beauty of it was once somebody got their hands on all this information, they had to have it,” Steele said. “The key in the early years was to just get the magazine in people’s hands.”
The 1989 Outland Trophy is the origin point of Steele’s magazine.
BYUs Mohammed Elewonibi entered the season as a little-known former junior college transfer. Back then, Steele worked on a college football newsletter part time. To put it together, he’d buy every preseason magazine and compile extensive notes on each program. But Steele couldn’t find Elewonibi’s name anywhere entering his senior season with the Cougars. When Elewonibi won the Outland Award, given to the nation’s top interior lineman, Steele came to a conclusion: “I can’t have this. I can’t write a football newsletter and not have all the information.”
Steele started to compile everything himself. Eventually, his newsletter looked so much like a magazine that someone suggested he make it so. Gameplan magazine’s Joe DelPopolo offered to distribute Steele’s publication in 1995, and thus “Phil Steele’s College Football Preview” was born. “It was more or less let’s give this a shot,” Steele said.
There were 16 dedicated college football magazines that year – even Lee Corso had a preview. Today, the newsstand is less crowded. Athlon, Street & Smith and Lindy’s remain staples alongside Steele’s publication, while many others have dropped off.
Street and Smith’s is the godfather of the genre, but it’s since merged with Sporting News. Athlon is another newsstand mainstay, and Lindy’s is always a favorite in the Southeast near its Birmingham home.
Yet nobody’s seemed to capture the college football landscape like Steele. DelPopolo’s best advice to Steele in 1995 was to make it to newsstands first. People craved college football during the summer and bought what they saw. Steele’s never really subscribed to that theory. His magazine releases in late June, well after the majority of other publications. Athlon hit newsstands in late-May, for example.
Steele said publishing his magazine early would be impossible. The development process starts annually the Sunday after Thanksgiving and ends at the end of May. Steele wrote every word of the preview the first 23 years. The last two years he’s taken a step back; penning the second write-through and making sweeping edits. Steele dropped mammoth writing responsibility to carve out interview times with FBS head coaches. This year, Steele said he spoke to 110 of the 130 FBS head coaches for about an hour to accurately capture each team’s roster post-spring.
The workload shifts from 60 hours a week in the winter to 80 or so come spring. By May, Steele is working seven days a week and rarely leaves his office until the final pages are sent for print.
“To get to magazine stands in the middle of May you have to go out in the middle of spring practice,” Steele said. “How can you write a magazine like that, I wonder. We’re out about a month-and-a-half after everyone else. But you know what? People are still going to buy my magazine even if they bought all the others so far. They wait and they’ll buy this one. It’s good we’ve finally established that and we can go to the press later, especially with the transfer portal.”
The constant nature of Steele’s layout is one of his calling cards, but the way his magazine is formed has shifted considerably. The first issue of Steele’s magazine had just one cover and 192 black-and-white, newsprint-style pages. Today, there are 352 pages in full color and eight regional covers. Steele started with just eight employees; his staff now hovers around 20.
Steele printed 80,000 magazines that first year. Now, he prints over 300,000 with a much better sale rate.
Even Steele’s rustic writing style has shifted a bit. He came up with his abbreviations 25 years ago because the printers told Steele they’d have to use four-point font to fit everything he tried to include. Now that Steele is a full-time ESPN employee, its editors have started to slowly alter Steele’s style. “Anytime I sent them an article they’re like, 'Nah, too many abbreviations. Do it over.’ I’m working on it slowly!”
“It’s tougher to read,” Steele said of his writing. “Someone who is an English major would go, ‘Oh my god, I can’t read this.’ But if you’re a hard-core fan you thought, ‘Man, look at all this information.’ You can go back to it all season long.”
***
Back to Steele versus the internet for a second.
Steele prides himself on depth of information and ease of access. That’s why Steele feels like his publication is shielded from some of the issues that have dogged the print industry. Not only does Steele print a depth chart – often the most accurate of any magazine because of his coaching interviews – but the players’ stats from the previous year are directly adjacent.
That’s part of the reason Steele’s layout remains largely static. He wants long-time readers to comfortably approach his magazine year after year.
It’s also what he feels insulates him from an aggregation culture.
Google Steele’s name and you’ll find hundreds of articles from the last few weeks citing his expert predictions for everything from the College Football Playoff to a team’s record in conference. That Steele picked Alabama over Clemson for the national title and both Georgia and Michigan to make the playoffs was known weeks before his magazine officially hit newsstands. The same could be said of his all-conference teams. Dozens of programs created graphics of his predictions well before the magazine officially went on sale.
ESPN also publishes a number of Steele’s articles, including top units, most improved and other lists he’s formulated. It’s almost as if you’ve read his magazine before you have a chance to even find it on newsstands.
Yet … Steele maintains this is good buzz. Nobody goes to his magazine for predictions or teams to watch, at least not completely.
“I think they buy it for easy access to the numbers and having that all in one spot,” Steele said. “I don’t think it really hurts me. I don’t think anybody buys my magazine to find out who I have No. 1 and 2. I think they buy it to have it on their coffee table or if you’re a writer, in the press box all season long, because it’s like having 130 media guides rolled into one.”
***
Earlier this June, Steele took his 13-year-old daughter, Savannah, to Cedar Point, an amusement park in Ohio. On the drive, Steele had a realization. This was the first day he’d taken off since the previous August.
Steele said he works 102.5 hours a week during the college football season. Outside of it, once the post-Thanksgiving grind begins, his schedule is similarly cramped. Steele is so result-oriented in his predictions he dedicates a two-page spread to how his predictions stack up against other magazines.
When Savannah asked her dad to explain his job, Steele could only parallel a high-stakes pursuit.
“During the season I feel like somebody is chasing me because I have to get so much work done,” Steele said. “I stay up until midnight and wake up at 4:30 a.m. just working frantically to get everything done. Then magazine season hits and you’re frantically trying to get things done. When you’re not working, you’re thinking, ‘I could slide in a couple hours here and try to get ahead a little. That’s all you're thinking.”
Steele admits there are times each cycle he thinks about quitting. Pages don’t come together; deadlines fly by; personal events are missed. But a small compliment can bring a rush of energy. Steele savors every time someone says his magazine is the college football bible just as he values every “thank you for what you do” from college coaches.
Twenty-five years in, Steele writes college football’s preeminent preview magazine. The power rankings he wrote at age eight are read by the college football world at large. Savannah asks her dad sometimes what he’d do without his magazine.
He doesn’t know.
“I’m not going to retire,” Steele said. “I’ll keep grinding. Twenty-five years from now hopefully I’ll still be grinding writing this puppy.”
Phil Steele vs. the internet: CFB's magazine maven won't ease up
Phil Steele vs. the internet: CFB's magazine maven won't ease up
Phil Steele, he of the college football preseason bible, wants to give me a quiz.
It’s Tuesday, June 25 and the 25th edition of “Phil Steele’s College Football Preview” magazine officially hit newsstands earlier this morning. Steele’s schedule for the day is a light 15 interviews; a stark departure from the seven-day-a-week writing grind during his publication push. In this moment, Steele’s responding to a question about his magazine’s place in the internet era. Specifically, where does his publication fit in a world that’s increasingly digital?
Steele pops off five questions in response: 1. Who is the starting left tackle for UCLA? 2. Three years ago Arizona played Hawaii, what was the final score and the spread? 3. Who was the leading rusher for Boise State last year? 4. Who does Tulsa play in Week 5? 5. What is the best rushing yards per game for Ohio State the last seven seasons?
He asks as a challenge. How long does it take to look up the answers on the internet vs. his magazine? Post-interview, 247Sports dived in. The final results may surprise you: Internet, 5:52 | Magazine, 3:20
“It’s still a quicker, easier reference than the internet,” Steele told 247Sports. “That’s the advantage we have.”
Filled with quirky abbreviations and sometimes tough-to-read type (small font, smaller margins), Steele’s magazine is distinct. It’s managed to emerge the last 25 years in what is a crowded preseason preview market. Look up during the college football doldrums of late June and early July, and you’ll find aggregation blurbs of Steele’s predictions and Twitter edits from college football programs celebrating Steele’s preseason all-conference nominees.
Steele, 59, estimates his magazine, if you include stats, featured over a million words in 2019; the totality of the Harry Potter series is 1,084,170 words. The eponymous publication has largely kept the same cramped layout for a quarter of a century. Steele prizes information above all.
Twenty-five years in, Steele is a mainstay in press boxes and on coffee tables alike. Not bad for a former print shop manager whose path toward a magazine essentially began on an irked whim.
“The beauty of it was once somebody got their hands on all this information, they had to have it,” Steele said. “The key in the early years was to just get the magazine in people’s hands.”
The 1989 Outland Trophy is the origin point of Steele’s magazine.
BYUs Mohammed Elewonibi entered the season as a little-known former junior college transfer. Back then, Steele worked on a college football newsletter part time. To put it together, he’d buy every preseason magazine and compile extensive notes on each program. But Steele couldn’t find Elewonibi’s name anywhere entering his senior season with the Cougars. When Elewonibi won the Outland Award, given to the nation’s top interior lineman, Steele came to a conclusion: “I can’t have this. I can’t write a football newsletter and not have all the information.”
Steele started to compile everything himself. Eventually, his newsletter looked so much like a magazine that someone suggested he make it so. Gameplan magazine’s Joe DelPopolo offered to distribute Steele’s publication in 1995, and thus “Phil Steele’s College Football Preview” was born. “It was more or less let’s give this a shot,” Steele said.
There were 16 dedicated college football magazines that year – even Lee Corso had a preview. Today, the newsstand is less crowded. Athlon, Street & Smith and Lindy’s remain staples alongside Steele’s publication, while many others have dropped off.
Street and Smith’s is the godfather of the genre, but it’s since merged with Sporting News. Athlon is another newsstand mainstay, and Lindy’s is always a favorite in the Southeast near its Birmingham home.
Yet nobody’s seemed to capture the college football landscape like Steele. DelPopolo’s best advice to Steele in 1995 was to make it to newsstands first. People craved college football during the summer and bought what they saw. Steele’s never really subscribed to that theory. His magazine releases in late June, well after the majority of other publications. Athlon hit newsstands in late-May, for example.
Steele said publishing his magazine early would be impossible. The development process starts annually the Sunday after Thanksgiving and ends at the end of May. Steele wrote every word of the preview the first 23 years. The last two years he’s taken a step back; penning the second write-through and making sweeping edits. Steele dropped mammoth writing responsibility to carve out interview times with FBS head coaches. This year, Steele said he spoke to 110 of the 130 FBS head coaches for about an hour to accurately capture each team’s roster post-spring.
The workload shifts from 60 hours a week in the winter to 80 or so come spring. By May, Steele is working seven days a week and rarely leaves his office until the final pages are sent for print.
“To get to magazine stands in the middle of May you have to go out in the middle of spring practice,” Steele said. “How can you write a magazine like that, I wonder. We’re out about a month-and-a-half after everyone else. But you know what? People are still going to buy my magazine even if they bought all the others so far. They wait and they’ll buy this one. It’s good we’ve finally established that and we can go to the press later, especially with the transfer portal.”
The constant nature of Steele’s layout is one of his calling cards, but the way his magazine is formed has shifted considerably. The first issue of Steele’s magazine had just one cover and 192 black-and-white, newsprint-style pages. Today, there are 352 pages in full color and eight regional covers. Steele started with just eight employees; his staff now hovers around 20.
Steele printed 80,000 magazines that first year. Now, he prints over 300,000 with a much better sale rate.
Even Steele’s rustic writing style has shifted a bit. He came up with his abbreviations 25 years ago because the printers told Steele they’d have to use four-point font to fit everything he tried to include. Now that Steele is a full-time ESPN employee, its editors have started to slowly alter Steele’s style. “Anytime I sent them an article they’re like, 'Nah, too many abbreviations. Do it over.’ I’m working on it slowly!”
“It’s tougher to read,” Steele said of his writing. “Someone who is an English major would go, ‘Oh my god, I can’t read this.’ But if you’re a hard-core fan you thought, ‘Man, look at all this information.’ You can go back to it all season long.”
***
Back to Steele versus the internet for a second.
Steele prides himself on depth of information and ease of access. That’s why Steele feels like his publication is shielded from some of the issues that have dogged the print industry. Not only does Steele print a depth chart – often the most accurate of any magazine because of his coaching interviews – but the players’ stats from the previous year are directly adjacent.
That’s part of the reason Steele’s layout remains largely static. He wants long-time readers to comfortably approach his magazine year after year.
It’s also what he feels insulates him from an aggregation culture.
Google Steele’s name and you’ll find hundreds of articles from the last few weeks citing his expert predictions for everything from the College Football Playoff to a team’s record in conference. That Steele picked Alabama over Clemson for the national title and both Georgia and Michigan to make the playoffs was known weeks before his magazine officially hit newsstands. The same could be said of his all-conference teams. Dozens of programs created graphics of his predictions well before the magazine officially went on sale.
ESPN also publishes a number of Steele’s articles, including top units, most improved and other lists he’s formulated. It’s almost as if you’ve read his magazine before you have a chance to even find it on newsstands.
Yet … Steele maintains this is good buzz. Nobody goes to his magazine for predictions or teams to watch, at least not completely.
“I think they buy it for easy access to the numbers and having that all in one spot,” Steele said. “I don’t think it really hurts me. I don’t think anybody buys my magazine to find out who I have No. 1 and 2. I think they buy it to have it on their coffee table or if you’re a writer, in the press box all season long, because it’s like having 130 media guides rolled into one.”
***
Earlier this June, Steele took his 13-year-old daughter, Savannah, to Cedar Point, an amusement park in Ohio. On the drive, Steele had a realization. This was the first day he’d taken off since the previous August.
Steele said he works 102.5 hours a week during the college football season. Outside of it, once the post-Thanksgiving grind begins, his schedule is similarly cramped. Steele is so result-oriented in his predictions he dedicates a two-page spread to how his predictions stack up against other magazines.
When Savannah asked her dad to explain his job, Steele could only parallel a high-stakes pursuit.
“During the season I feel like somebody is chasing me because I have to get so much work done,” Steele said. “I stay up until midnight and wake up at 4:30 a.m. just working frantically to get everything done. Then magazine season hits and you’re frantically trying to get things done. When you’re not working, you’re thinking, ‘I could slide in a couple hours here and try to get ahead a little. That’s all you're thinking.”
Steele admits there are times each cycle he thinks about quitting. Pages don’t come together; deadlines fly by; personal events are missed. But a small compliment can bring a rush of energy. Steele savors every time someone says his magazine is the college football bible just as he values every “thank you for what you do” from college coaches.
Twenty-five years in, Steele writes college football’s preeminent preview magazine. The power rankings he wrote at age eight are read by the college football world at large. Savannah asks her dad sometimes what he’d do without his magazine.
He doesn’t know.
“I’m not going to retire,” Steele said. “I’ll keep grinding. Twenty-five years from now hopefully I’ll still be grinding writing this puppy.”
