How They Write Preseason Mags

[DKW 86 7,426]

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/loca...ports-headlines

They've got it covered

Annual preseason college football magazines are sizing up the coming season

Kyle Hightower | Sentinel Staff Writer

Posted July 6, 2006

The first football Saturday of 2006 is a little less than two months away, but with an ever-growing swell of preseason magazines already on bookshelves, fans have plenty to debate during the dog days of summer.

In the fall, names such as Bowden, Meyer, Paterno and Stoops are the focal points of fan debate. But from the time the first preseason publications hit the shelves in May until kickoff in September, names such as Sporting News, Street & Smith's and Lindy's are ample substitutes of fan envy and ire.

For people like Phil Steele, who says he writes every article in the 300-page-plus Phil Steele's National College Preview, witnessing the football-magazine frenzy before each season never gets old.

"My wife would not object to the word 'obsession' being used to describe what I do," says Steele, 46.

He said he spends an estimated 100 hours a week researching and compiling the information that goes into his publication.

Steele grew up in Cleveland, and by the time he was old enough to understand what was going on, his father would allow him to pick any three football publications he wanted. Steele then would use those publications as a guide to devise his own rankings for fun.

At 21, Steele started his own football sports service. Just as he did as a child, he found himself at newsstands, researching existing publications for insights. But what he found was that the existing products he was reading didn't have the information he wanted.

What started as a black-and-white college football guide edited and distributed by a staff of eight has grown into a full-color magazine put out by a staff of nearly 30.

Dwarfing his major competitors with a magazine that has been 328 pages the past two years (the next-largest in the 2006 crop is the Gold Sheet, which is 240 pages but also includes pro football), Steele doesn't mind the growing escalation.

"I still go to the newsstands every year, just to see what everybody else is doing," Steele said. "I personally feel ours has twice as much information, but I'm nervous now because I'm sure they're going to catch up."

Steele's publication has been consistently near the top in a system that ranks each preseason magazine. The Web site preseason.stassen.com -- started in 1993 by Newark, Ohio, software engineer Chris Stassen -- tracks the accuracy of college football magazines based on their conference and national rankings predictions.

The magazines are graded on a point system that gives them a point for every spot in the standings they miss.

Even with a couple of rough years in 2002 and '03, Steele is in first place overall for the past five years.

The top three in '05 were Lindy's, Gold Sheet and Phil Steele's, with Lindy's and Street & Smith's successfully picking the national-championship showdown correctly, albeit with the wrong winner.

Lindy's celebrates its 25th edition this season and is commemorating it with a look back at the past 25 years in the Southeastern Conference. Associate Editor Ben Cook said coming up with fresh angles isn't a problem.

"It's not that hard," said Cook, who freelanced for Lindy's for 15 years before becoming a full-time editor in November. "You got to remember that college football is such a changing thing. We usually get a ton of e-mail no matter what we do.

"You base it on information, but all this stuff is subjective."

Because of the competition, the publications publish earlier and begin work earlier, many the week after the Super Bowl. The Sporting News, for instance, goes to press at the end of April.

"We make a big effort to make sure there is good analysis," said Tom Dienhart, an associate editor at TSN. "We pride ourselves on our depth charts, to have the most complete and up-to-date."

This year, as usual, several of the publications' regional covers centered on Florida's "Big Three": Florida, Florida State and Miami. And although the quarterbacks at all three of those schools are on at least one cover, Florida's Chris Leak graces the front of at least five.

There also are mistakes, like the flub on the cover of Sporting News that boasts: "UCF Vs. USF: Showdown in Miami." The game is in Orlando.

Behind it all are the Phil Steeles of the world, who work feverishly during the spring every year to crank out information that fans crave.

Fans that include Phil Steele.

"Just seeing my name on a magazine is big for me," he said. "I'm just doing what I love. The fact that I've been the most accurate, that's just a blessing."