On the front page of his website:

".............ATTENTION CUSTOMERS!
Due to unforeseen circumstances we will not be printing/publishing the Phil Steele 2013 NFL (or FCS) magazine, right now we are uncertain of its future status................"
http://www.philsteele.com/

Course no surprise here, as he had announced last year that there likely wouldn't be one this year. But just in case anyone was wondering...

This isn't a surprise, but it's still unfortunate news. That was some of the best money I ever spent.

FCS is dying. I seriously doubt there is enough demand to justify publishing the magazine.

(05-01-2013 10:00 PM)rufus Wrote:  FCS is dying. I seriously doubt there is enough demand to justify publishing the magazine.

There never was enough demand to publish the magazine. Not in the 80s. Not in the 90s. Not in the 00s. And not now.

JMU has outgrown FCS and needs to move up, and will move up, but the notion that FCS is dying because 4 long time I-AA teams (Tx State, UMass, GSU, and App State) decided to move up and a couple of more will, is baloney.

(05-01-2013 11:20 PM)BDKJMU Wrote:  

(05-01-2013 10:00 PM)rufus Wrote:  FCS is dying. I seriously doubt there is enough demand to justify publishing the magazine.

There never was enough demand to publish the magazine. Not in the 80s. Not in the 90s. Not in the 00s. And not now.

JMU has outgrown FCS and needs to move up, and will move up, but the notion that FCS is dying because 4 long time I-AA teams (Tx State, UMass, GSU, and App State) decided to move up and a couple of more will, is baloney.

The programs that account for nearly half of all FCS/I-AA championships have moved up or are in the process of moving up. Over one third of the runners up in FCS/I-AA history have done the same.

It's hard for me to believe that interest in FCS is not dwindling when the division has lost schools like Marshall, Nevada, Boise State, Louisiana Tech, Arkansas State, App State, and Georgia Southern. And those are just the schools that played for national championships. Outside of possibly some of the Dakota schools, none of the replacements hold a candle to the programs that have been lost.

Maybe it's a stretch to say that FCS is dying, because there is indeed still a subdivision called FCS. It is simply not the FCS that we signed up for.

(05-01-2013 11:20 PM)BDKJMU Wrote:  

(05-01-2013 10:00 PM)rufus Wrote:  FCS is dying. I seriously doubt there is enough demand to justify publishing the magazine.

There never was enough demand to publish the magazine. Not in the 80s. Not in the 90s. Not in the 00s. And not now.

JMU has outgrown FCS and needs to move up, and will move up, but the notion that FCS is dying because 4 long time I-AA teams (Tx State, UMass, GSU, and App State) decided to move up and a couple of more will, is baloney.

I don't have it in front of me, but somewhere in last year's magazine he wrote that without sufficient interest by a large corporation, publishing again wouldn't make financial sense for him. I took that to mean he needed someone with deep pockets to spend a lot more advertising in the magazine than he was getting.