Phil Steele's college football preview is unlike any other preview magazine in the country in just about every way possible.

I'm still not sure what my overall impression of it is. It's a whopping 328 pages. It has all the information you could think of being included in a magazine. It ranks everything from the top 40 teams in the country to the top 60 offensive tackles (Rutgers' Jerremy Zuttah is ranked 28th, if you're wondering). It has seemingly no punctuation marks and, as far as writing is concerned, it looks more like a 328-page text message than anything resembling journalism.

Add all that up, and all I can say about the format -- and its the same every year -- is that my head is still spinning and I don't think it's because of the 90 degree weather in Trenton.

If you want to fully dissect all of this stuff, it's well worth picking one up for yourself. But here are a few interesting -- and sometimes puzzling -- tidbits:

• Steele gives Rutgers by far the least respect of any magazine editor. While Athlon Sports ranks the Knights 10th in the nation (higher than most ranking sets, to be sure), Steele ranks them 30th in the country and fourth in the Big East, behind West Virgina (No. 4), Louisville (7) and South Florida (24.) Steele has an exceptional track record of making outside-the-box predictions, so I'm not necessarily doubting his apparent snub of the Knights. But I was a bit puzzled by one thing: he gives the Knights so much less respect than other publications, but rather than telling us why the Knights are so overrated, he writes next to their No. 30 ranking that "the Knights nearly appeared in the National Title game last year and just missed out on a BCS bid with their OT loss to West Virginia. It should be a 6-0 start for RU and RB Ray Rice is one of their 13 returning starters. " To me, that doesn't adequately explain how a team that finished 12th in the rankings last year and has an offense centered around the greatest player in school history isn't even one of the best 29 teams in the country this year.
• Among the other eye-opening -- though not necessarily wrong -- picks Steele made are the following: He has Florida State, which went 7-6 last year and is ranked 26th by Athlon, ranked eighth in the country, six spots ahead of their cross-state rivals -- the defending national champion Gators, who Athlon ranks sixth; and he ranks Wisconsin, who went 12-1 last year and might be better than Ohio State and Michigan, a mediocre 16th, behind the likes of Georgia and South Carolina, and just one spot ahead of Alabama. (I guess Steele is pretty high on the SEC, wouldn't you say?)
• He gives Rice very little respect compared to everyone else, which I think is the most puzzling of anything in the magazine. While almost every other publication has Rice ranked as either the 2nd or 3rd best runing back in the country (Darren McFadden of Arkansas is the consensus No. 1), Steele ranks him seventh. He's really high on Oregon's Jonathan Stewart (ranked 3rd), Arizona State's Ryan Torain (4th) and Texas' Jamaal Charles (6th), all of whom are above Rice on hist list but not on any other list in the country. The other three backs ahead of Rice are McFadden (1), West Virginia's Steve Slaton (2) and Michigan's Mike Hart (5), all of whom are potential Heisman finalsits.
• Steele, with good reason, loves Louisville's offense, especially its passing game. He rates Brian Brohm ahead of USC's John David Booty as the top QB in the country, and has Mario Urrutia and Harry Douglas ranked 7th and 15h respectively on his list of top wide receivers.
• A look at where Rutgers players fall on his positional rankings lists: Zuttah, as mentioned, is ranked 28th on the offensive tackle list and Rice 7th on the running back list. Rice is not even the highest rated Scarlet Knight from New Rochelle, N.Y. That goes to Rice's high school teammate Courtney Greene, who Steele ranks as the fourth best strong safety in the country. The other Scarlet Knigts listed: Mike Teel is 46th on the QB list, Jamaal Westerman is 24h on the defensive end list; Eric Foster is 44th -- much lower than on most other lists -- among defensive tackles; and Ron Girault is 26th among free safeties.

That's all for today. Feedback is welcome.

- Ben