Today’s blog was going to take a look at the most/least improved pass offenses of the last 20 years, but late yesterday afternoon I was given some great information that many college football fans look forward to each summer. PhilSteele.com is a pure college and pro information site. There is no gambling information on this site and any mention of the point spread of a game is to let you know who was favored and expected to win when the games were played.

With that being said, every year I do about 300 radio shows and a popular question this time of year is “Who do you think will be favored when XXX and XXX meet?” This is asked by many callers and the hosts of the radio stations. While I can always speculate during June and early July, there is a place in Las Vegas that is one of the first to put out some lines on the upcoming games for the 2010 season. Read more…

Today’s blog will start a series, which will analyze the most/least improved units over the last 20 years. Each day this week I will have a new offensive or defensive statistical category to examine and today I will start with offensive rush yards.

There are many factors that contribute to a significant change in rush yards. First, a new coach may come in and prefer a more run-oriented attack than the previous coach. Naturally a lot more rushing carries will usually equal a lot more yards. Similarly you may see a significant drop in rush yards if the new coach features a pass-happy offense than the previous coach. Read more…

Many of you have asked me for an updated Bowl Projections listing since USC was eliminated from bowl contention recently. In the magazine which went to press before the NCAA’s ruling I projected the Trojans to go to the Rose Bowl. Naturally most of my Pac-10 selections for bowls have changed with the ineligibility of USC. Oregon now gets my pick to go to the Rose Bowl and a lot of the other Pac-10 teams get bumped up. Here are my current projections for all 35 of this year’s bowl games which includes the BCS Championship game. Read more…

The magazine is printed as late as possible and we send it off to the press in the middle of May. 95% of what is written is still completely accurate come August. Every year though there are some players who have left the program for one reason or another during the summer and we will have those players updated in the 2010 “Out for the Year” section, which we have just posted on the site. (see below)

What I do in my personal magazine is circle the players that are lost and that way you can tell at a glance which teams suffer the most attrition and those that do not lose anybody. Prior to the season, the players who were lost during the summer and in fall practice are circled in red while the players lost during the season to injury or suspension are circled in blue. Read more…

The last two years in July I have posted my Coaches on the Hot Seat. Here is a quick recap of how those coaches fared. In 2008, my #1, #2 and #3 coaches on the hot seat were all fired BEFORE the end of the season! My #5 and #9 coaches on the hot seat were also fired before the season ended. Two more coaches were let go after the year, so 7 of the 12 lost their jobs. Two coaches in Kirk Ferentz and Mike Stoops did what they needed to do as Ferentz got the Hawkeyes to a New Year’s bowl winning in blowout fashion and Stoops guided Arizona to a bowl and then won it. Both coaches were OFF the Hot Seat last year. The three remaining coaches who kept their jobs all made my hot seat list again last year and all were fired during or after the 2009 season. Read more…

We are only 50 days away from the start of college football season and today I want to talk about a couple of new features on PhilSteele.com.

First, for the past few weeks on Facebook I have been taking requests for some of my early forecasts for 2010’s top games. Today I featured the top 5 most requested games from the past two weeks. Here are my early forecasts for those games. Read more…

The last couple of years, I have I put up a poll for everyone to pick who would win each conference game during the year. I found these results fascinating prior to the year. When you vote in the poll, it tabulates the current % of votes for each team in each individual game. Here are the results of the fan poll from 2009.

When initially reviewing the results I was quite impressed with the accuracy as you the fans did quite well in numerous conferences. In fact, when I calculated the results (similar to what stassen.com does for all the major preseason college football magazines) you guys finished #1!!!! Check out my June 10 Blog for more details.

Here are the current conference standings for the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, ACC, Pac-10, Big East and MWC with the percentages of each game factored in according to your votes. Read more…

Today I conclude my series of conference teams of the decade with a look at how each individual conference fared in the past decade in bowl games. To come up with a ranking system I included their overall bowl record, records against BCS conf teams, non-BCS conf teams, records against ranked opponents, the ranked teams’ records, and most importantly their BCS bowl record.

Here are the overall records for each conference and how I would rank each conference’s performance in the past 10 years in bowl games. Keep in mind this not my overall ranking on which conference is the toughest in the country but just one factor that goes into my ranking along with non-conf record, record against BCS foes, number of players drafted and number of top 10 finishes just to name a few. Read more…

For the next two weeks, I will be taking a look at the conference teams of the decade for 2000-2009. Factored into my analysis will be conference win %, conference and division titles, bowl games and bowl wins. I will also include BCS bowl wins, final AP rankings and number of national championships for the major conferences. There have been several teams who have changed conferences during that time and I will include them in the analysis for any season(s) they were affiliated with that certain conference. I will also be doing a breakdown of how the conference did in bowl games during the decade and I will emphasis the overall win/loss record, the number of BCS bowl wins, and the records against Non-BCS and ranked bowl teams.

While some conferences may have no-brainers as the top team, other conferences were very competitive over the past decade. Here is the schedule for the upcoming week with the conferences I will be analyzing on each date. Read more…