In case you missed it, college football's data-crunching cyborg of justice, Phil Steele, was featured on EDSBS Live last night with an hour of unfiltered NCAA gridiron glory. You remember how in the Matrix movies they plug the wires in the back of people's head and download information? It was kind of like that.

He covered just about everything you want to know about all the major players and a few of the non majors as well. He explained a few of the more confounding points in this year's book as well.

As for us, he comes bearing grim tidings. He projects 7-8 wins for the Tide and finishing 3rd in the SEC West (with Auburn projected as the champion).

Basically he seems to think last year was something of an anomaly. A tougher schedule for '08 allied with the continued phasing in of Saban's recruits equals another step in the process rather than any kind of promised land.

Overall though he talked as rapidly as possible for a full hour about the 2008 season and it was a beautiful thing to behold with more than a month and a half left out here in the wilds of the offseason.

The main page of EDSBS Live is here but you can download last night's show here (be warned, it's a pretty big mp3 file).

::UPDATE:: I've culled the almost three minute segement of Steele talking specifically about Bama into a seperate audio file you can access here.