Football is less than 2 weeks away. On Friday at 12 noon we closed the conference poll and I have the final results. This is how you the voters picked each of the conference races this year. I will keep track of how each of the votes went and compare it to my magazine and the other magazines and let you know where the fan votes finish in the accuracy poll.

For the next week I will post this poll under the Projected Standings for 2009. At the end of next week I will shift it to my computer’s projection for the season. This will be updated on a weekly basis after the previous week’s games are complete and the computer has new power ratings. I find it fascinating that many times you will see some teams open up 2-0 and at the top of the league yet finish near the bottom due to the strength of schedule at different times. If you look at the current conference standings you do not get a true picture for a team’s true odds of where they will finish in the standings. These standings are projected by my main computer rankings which take into account the yards rushing and passing as well as the points scored and special teams. These are NOT my personal projections. Read more…

We are starting up a weekly email list where we will email out interesting things that are on the site that week, some special offers and even some information that is not out on PhilSteele.com.

If you are interested in receiving these email updates, please email updates@philsteele.com (with the subject: Email List) and you will be added today.

Just to let you know the players lost for the season are piling up fast. It seems like every day I am circling 5 to 10 additional players for the magazine. I always circle the players in my magazine in RED if they were lost prior to the year and then in BLUE if they were lost during the season. That way I can differentiate between the two.

Make sure you check out the Injury Section to get all the players that have been lost so far.

Utah has a three way race for QB but true frosh Jordan Wynn will be taking the snaps with the #1’s and is the leader at this point. JUCO Terrance Cain is running the second unit and Corbin Louks was demoted to the third team and then transferred to Nevada. It is Wynn’s job to lose. If he does hold on and start the opener than he would be the 3rd true frosh to start at Utah since freshman eligibility was restored in 1972. Neither of the previous two were a full time starter. Ken Vierra had two starts in 1981 and Scott Cate had one start in 1982.

Michigan will have a true frosh at QB this year as their top 2 QB’s are both true frosh. A stat that might be a little unsettling for Wolverine fans is that as many as 10 true frosh could be in the two deep for this year’s opener.

If you are looking for a Fantasy Football sleeper, how about Rutgers WR Mohamed Sanu who is a true frosh. He has worked his way to #1 on the depth chart and is showing staying power in that role. In their scrimmage on Tuesday, Julian Hayes was their top receiver with 135 yards on 7 receptions and he will not be on anyone’s radar either.

Wake Forest lost WR Terence Davis for the season, right after he led the team in receptions in a scrimmage. QB Skylar Jones was their 3rd highest rated recruit in 2007 and is the team’s fastest player. He hit just 5 of 12 passes in that same scrimmage and figured to see the field very little this year playing behind veteran Riley Skinner. Grobe moved Jones to WR on Wednesday. He could find himself back at QB if injuries cropped up or next year when Skinner moves on.

Does this sound like a guy you would take EARLY in your College Fantasy Football draft. Take a player that is 6’5” 225 lbs, who runs a 4.3 40 with a 42” vertical leap who to his own admission did not go 100% on every play in 2008 but is having a great August and coaches say the light bulb went on. He started the last 3 games as a TRUE frosh and is the teams leading returning receiver. I am talking about Jonathan Baldwin of Pitt who should challenge for the receiving title of the Big East this year.

Bradley McDougald is a true frosh WR at Kansas. Mark Mangino enters his 8th season at KU. Mangino says that McDougald (PS#52) has performed better than any true frosh he has had. He probably won’t be a great Fantasy pickup because of all the quality experienced KU WR’s on hand but it was worth noting.

Going back to Fantasy Football sleepers. How would you like a VHT RB (PS#18) who was recruited by USC, one that is 200 lbs with good speed and his head coach says he plays “violent”. The same assistant that recruited him to USC is now the head coach at Washington and the RB is Chris Polk who played as a true frosh until injury early and redshirted.

The “Who Will Win the Conference” Contest will expire tomorrow at noon, so today I’ll shift my attention to the Non-Conference Poll. I find this poll fascinating because there are some intriguing non-conference games that can make or break a season. To name a few, I think the Virginia Tech/Alabama, Georgia/Oklahoma St, Oklahoma/Miami, FL and USC/Ohio St games are definitely ones that will make or break a season for either team. I am going to give you a head start on voting in the Non-Conference Poll. To see where you rank against other voters, as soon as your vote is entered in, you will see the % stacked with or against you.

Tomorrow the Non-Conference Poll will replace the Who Will Win the Conference Contest on the front page. Make sure you’ve signed up and picked your Conference Winners by tomorrow at noon ET for your votes to be counted and to be eligible for the prizes (a legitimate email address must be entered also).

The Non-Conference Poll will run until Sunday, Aug 30th. On Monday the 31st, look for the Weekly Polls to start. In the first week there are 40 games (FCS games will not be included), you vote on who will win. Weekly prizes will be awarded throughout the season.

I am doing my radio show circuit this summer and whenever I talk about Alabama, I think back to last year and how expectations were somewhat low for their team heading into the year. They were coming off a 7-6 season and had 4 games they figured to be a good sized underdog in. They had to play the defending national champs (LSU) in Death Valley, the preseason #1 team of 2008 (Georgia) Between the Hedges, the defending SEC East champ (Tennessee, #18 preseason) and the ACC preseason favorite (Clemson, #9 preseason) all away from home. Even the most optimistic Tide fan probably hoped for a split of those 4 games. As it turns out the Tide won all 4 and at the end of the regular season they were 12-0 and #1 in the country.

Read more…

On my August 4th & 5th Daily Blogs I went over how the fans were voting Pre-August on each of this year’s conference games. Not only do I find this information very interesting, but being the competitor that I am, I always like to see how I stack up against other folks in their predictions. If you feel the same way, there is still time to enter our “You Pick the Conference” Contest. At the end of the regular season I will announce this year’s winners and prizes will be awarded.

Read more…

The start of the season is less than 3 weeks away so I will begin my breakdown of some of this year’s top non-conference games for the 2009 season. Today I will look at 2 games and give you a glimpse of what you can expect to see on my Top 25 Forecasts each week during the season. Read more…

Every Friday I will go thru some individual notes that I have taken during the week and put in some random thoughts. I hope you enjoyed last Friday’s blog.

Read more…

I was doing a Tennessee radio show last week and a caller asked how big an underdog I thought the Volunteers would be against Florida on Sept 19th vs Florida. All I did was go to PhilSteele.com and click on my Daily Blog for Thursday July 9th. To get past blogs just scroll down to the bottom of this page and the blogs are archived. We have the odds updated as of today on that blog. I answered the called by saying that at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas right now Florida was a 25’ point favorite.

The host of the show then made the comment “Wow, I wonder when the last time Tennessee was that big of an underdog?” All I had to do was go to PhilSteele.com and click on the “Team Pages” in the left blue column of the front page. Once in the Team pages section, I clicked on Tennessee. These team pages are loaded with information and in the right column of EVERY team page is a “Last 20 Years – Yr By Yr Results.” Read more…