In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s Phil Steele season. Has been, now, for a couple of months. It’s that time of year when Steele releases his annual college-football preview magazine, which this year is 376 pages, or enough heft, if it were a porterhouse steak, to satisfy the most famished offensive lineman.

Steele’s is the college-football magazine to end all college-football magazines. It costs $24.99. It’s like the Texas media guide before the NCAA mandated that those needed to weigh something less than adult heifers.

If I were to try to describe what’s in it, it would go something like “prevs. ’26 seas. w/stat. analy., TO diff., #1-#132 TO-TD rnkngs, SU/ATS prog.” The prose, let’s just say, flows something short of Hemingway’s.

Near the table of contents is a key to all the abbreviations – 221 of them. When it’s not unintelligible, it’s often perplexing.

Here’s what’s immediately underneath “2026” forecast for UCLA, for instance:

“Chip Kelly opened 3-9 and improved the record 4 straight years to 9-4 in 2022. In ’23, they beat Boise for an 8-5 finish and Kelly left to become OC at Ohio State. The Bruins faced just one team they faced in ’23 with the move to the Big Ten, and five of their foes were teams off DD win seasons. New coach Foster knew the personnel since he had been here the previous 7 years and they were +78 ypg in Pac-12 play in ’23. They did face the largest jump in schedule strength (pg 27), including LSU in the non-conference, and I said they would have to fight to get to a bowl . . . “

Obviously, Phil has never had an editor shouting in his ear, “Write shorter!” He appears to be the written equivalent of the old line about asking somebody what time it is, and being told how to build a watch.

Here’s a snippet of his 2026 assessment of Wisconsin’s defensive backs: “The Badgers were #2 in my PDR in 2017, #8, #6 then #5 (55.5%, 9-16) in ’21. In ’22 they lost all four starters and dropped to #35. In ’23, they lost 2.5 starters and were #37 (61%, 19-13). In ’24, seven of the top 8 were back, but they dropped to #62 (62%, 12-4). . .”

You could also say Steele doesn’t miss many chances to congratulate himself. Next to his forecast of “Surprise Teams,” he reviews his annual lists of those picks. As in, “2025 Last year, my #1 Surprise team was Oklahoma, and they went from 6-7 to hosting a playoff game! My No. 2 Surprise team was Texas A&M and they went from 8-5 to 11-1 and also hosted a playoff game!”

Just my luck. A few years back, I decided to take Steele’s advice, and laid down some cash at the local casino on his No. 1 surprise team, Texas A&M, on an “over” win total. Alas, that team flopped, a familiar fate of Jimbo Fisher’s editions at A&M, and pretty soon, he was out the door with his $76-million parting gift and I was tearing up my Aggie ticket.

Steele doesn’t mind touting his work ethic. You come away with the idea that instead of opening presents on Christmas morning, he’d rather be working on a rundown of Georgia Southern’s linebackers.

Make no mistake, I realize mine isn’t a consensus view on the magazine. It’s like somebody who says they don’t like Paris. Most people seem to worship at the altar of Phil’s abbreviations.

Truth be told, the magazine is an incomparable vault of information. I’ve consulted it innumerable times for historical point-spread numbers, as well as handy things like how a team has performed in its last five bowl games. Steele certainly doesn’t miss much.

But a year ago, I ran my thoughts on the magazine by a highly respected media colleague, asking, “Why do we need to review what happened in 2023? Just find it a very hard read.”

He replied, “You are preaching to the choir. I bought it once and the ridiculous overuse of abbreviations and cramped pages made it essentially unreadable. And yes, nobody strains harder to remind everyone he was right about any and all predictions.”

We love you, Phil. Some of you, anyway, the part we can understand.