From 2005-’08 I published an article titled Coaching Changes in my College Football Preview magazine. Each year I try to make the magazine a little bit bigger and a little bit better but we’re capped out at 328 pages so Coaching Changes does not appear in my 2011 magazine. We have had a lot of requests for this article and since the website has an unlimited amount of room, PhilSteele.com is a great vehicle to continue publishing this article and I will do so each year.

There is something to be said for coaching stability as it usually takes a couple of years for a new head coach to get a program going. They usually have their best success when they have a team full of their own recruits and their offensive and defensive systems have been in place for a couple of years. The first few years can be rough on a new head coach as they inherit players who now have to learn new schemes on both offense and defense and he has to learn the players strengths and weaknesses. Pete Carroll won two straight National Titles but in his first year the Trojans opened up at 2-5 and finished at just 6-6 after the bowl. Tommy Tuberville’s first team at Auburn was just 5-6 but in his 6th season they were a perfect 13-0. Nick Saban’s first LSU team started off 3-3 and finished 8-4 but in his 4th year they won a share of the National Title. In Bob Stoops’ first year at Oklahoma, the Sooners were just 7-5, including a bowl loss to Mississippi. Since then, they have won a National Title and played in seven Big 12 Championship games. Les Miles went 4-7 in his first year at Oklahoma St followed by 3 winning years. Jim Tressel was just 7-5 his first year but won a National Title in his second. Kirk Ferentz was a combined 4-19 his first two seasons but the Hawkeyes have now been to six Jan bowls. Pat Hill’s first two Fresno St teams went a combined 11-12 but since then have had 11 winning years. Finally Woody Hayes won just 4 games in his first season at Ohio St. Read more…

The AP Poll was released over the weekend and today I can officially come up with Overrated and Underrated teams for the upcoming year.

First, here is the Preseason AP Top 25.

Overrated Teams

#23 Auburn-There are several signs pointing downward for last year’s defending champ. This year they lose the best offensive player in the NCAA in Heisman winner QB Cam Newton as well as arguably the best defensive player in DT Nick Fairley. Auburn also benefited from an amazing 7 net close wins and naturally the schedule gets tougher with road games vs Clemson, South Carolina, Arkansas, LSU and Georgia. They lose an incredible 31 lettermen and return just 6 starters (fewest in the country). Last year I had Texas as my #1 overrated team (preseason AP #5) and they went from the National Title game to 5-7 and Auburn will have to have some talented youngsters grow up quickly to avoid a similar fate

#22 Florida-After an 8-5 season (NR) former head coach Meyer stepped down due to health concerns and they bring a new HC in Muschamp who has no previous HC experience and just 10 returning starters. The Gators have just 3 SEC HG’s and play South Carolina and UGA away from home and pull the top two teams (Bama and LSU) out of the West. I think UF may have a tough time topping last year’s 8 wins and will not finish in the AP Top 25 at the end of the year.

#9 Oklahoma St-Last year I took a lot of flack for picking the Cowboys last in the Big 12 South but nearly every magazine picked them 5th or 6th as they were one of the more inexperienced teams in the country. Naturally they went on to a great season with their first 11-win season in school history. This year they return 2 of their 3 “triplets” in Weeden and Blackmon but OSU loses OC Holgorsen and RB Hunter from an off avg 44.2 ppg, which was their best since 1988. OSU was also +12 in TO’s, has five Big 12 away games (incl at Texas A&M, Texas, Missouri, and Texas Tech) and only had 2 starts lost to injury last year. They do get Oklahoma at home again this year but were outgained by 209 yds to the Sooners last year. There is no question that the Cowboys are very talented but because of having such a tough B12 schedule I do not have them in my Top 15. Read more…

Today the preseason AP Top 25 was released with Oklahoma clearly ranked #1. Every year I am particularly intrigued by who is placed in the preseason AP Top 10 as I try to predict what those teams will be shortly after the previous season is completed.

Most AP voters usually look at a couple of criteria when they evaluate a team for the upcoming season. First they look at the number of returning starters that the team has coming back particularly at the offensive skill positions. A team that returns its starting QB and a combination of its RB and WRs is often times more highly thought of than a team that loses its starting QB but returns its entire offensive line. Similarly a team that returns most of its starters on offense but loses a lot of its defensive playmakers usually is more highly thought of than a team that returns a majority of its defensive starters but loses its skill position players on offense.

Another factor that is heavily weighted is the performance of the team in the bowl game, which undoubtedly is the lasting image of that team in the offseason. A team coming off a huge bowl win usually is more highly thought of than a team that is coming off a bowl loss regardless of what their schedule looks like for the upcoming season. Read more…

Schools have a lot of different methods in determining returning starters. I personally look at the individual starters for all 120 FBS teams. I determine only 11 starters from the previous year. Some schools have the criteria of 5 or more starts and therefore list 14 starters returning (as an example: 9 starters returning, 5 starters lost). I look at each position and determine my starters. Sometimes my criteria is not just 6 or more starts. As an example: at Nebraska a couple years ago year RB Marlon Lucky had 11 starts at the I-back position. His “backup” Roy Helu had 2 starts and Quentin Castille had 1. Determining the Nebraska RB position on the start basis would have a starter lost from the RB position. I look at the fact that Helu led the team in ’08 with 803 yds rush while Lucky was a distant second at 517. Castille almost topped Lucky’s numbers with 467. Each of the 3 had almost identical carries. With the top rusher back and 1,373 of the teams 1,910 RB yds (72%) I graded that unit as a starter returning.

In the magazine I list what I feel is the most accurate starters returning chart in the country on each team’s right page. Since the magazine was published in May there have been some teams which have lost some returning starters for different reasons. Here on my Friday blog I am providing you with a single chart that lists all 120 teams so you can see the starters returning at a glance and in RED I list the teams who have lost starters since May. If you’re wondering who was lost, check out my complete list of injuries on the front page of PhilSteele.com which we update daily. Read more…

Turnovers can have a huge impact on games and on a team’s season. They can also lead to many misleading final scores. During the season I list all of the previous week’s misleading final scores on PhilSteele.com on my Monday Daily Blog. By reading about them each week you can uncover some underrated and overrated teams throughout the season.

Here are a couple of examples from last year. Iowa St benefitted in B2B weeks from a combined +8 in TO’s beating Northern Iowa and Texas Tech by a combined 79-38. The next week they were even in TO’s vs Utah and were pummeled at home losing 68-27.

West Virginia outgained Conn 414-278 and had a 24-16 FD edge but were -4 in TO’s and lost 16-13. The next week they hammered Cincinnati 37-10 as a small favorite.

Turnovers can not only make a difference in a game but can make the difference between a winning and losing season.
Two years ago there was another GREAT example. In 2008, Buffalo won the MAC Title thanks mostly to being +19 in turnovers. They were actually outgained by an avg of 408-370 during the season! Last year they had 13 returning starters and this time outgained foes 405-343. That means they went from -38 ypg to +62 ypg (100 ypg better) but their record dropped to 5-7 as the TO’s were -7. Read more…

I have gotten a couple of suggestions to put up my initial FBS power ratings that will be updated weekly throughout the season. If you are a follower of my magazine, I am sure you are familiar with the fact that I have NINE different sets of power ratings that I create each preseason to give me 9 different ways of analyzing a team. One is based on the individual talent level and performance of each position on each team and those are added up for the rating. Another is based on my Power Plays numbers, which include rushing and passing offenses, defenses and special teams.

As for the ratings listed below, these are my Plus/Minus ratings. I first take last year’s final Plus/Minus ratings, which are calculated mostly by the score of each game last year and the strength of opponents played. Losing to Alabama by 5 would move a team up in the ratings (Alabama would have been expected to win big), while beating Akron by 15 in 2010 would probably have moved the same team down. I then take my aforementioned Plus/Minus ratings (see page 305 of the magazine) and add them to the totals. Some teams are weaker than last year and drop in the rankings, while the ones that are improved move up. Is this the main set of ratings I use? No, that would be my Power Poll rankings, which are a combination of the 9 sets. This is a solid set of numbers and what I have noticed is it most closely resembles what the general perception of each team is heading into 2011. Read more…

Earlier this week I went over how all 120 teams have fared at home this decade and how they have fared on the road. Here are the results for all 120 teams combined.

120 FBS Home team records: 4625-2690 (63.2%)
120 FBS Away team records: 2642-3959 (40.0%)

That means that on the average teams in the FBS (1A) have a home winning % that is 23.2% greater than their away winning percentage. Now you guys know me by now. I cant leave things go at just that without having a few more questions answered. I wonder which teams play at a much higher level at home than they do on the road. This would be answered by taking the home winning % and subtracting the road %. Also which teams are true road warriors almost playing as well on the road as they do at home? Here are the results for all 120 teams for their home and away records this decades. I ranked them in order of biggest disparity between home and away % to the lowest. Read more…

In yesterday’s blog I took a look at home records from the past decade and today I will look at how team’s have performed on the road the past decade. Here are the away records for all 120 teams the past 10 years. Read more…

In my July 28 blog, I gave you my homefield edges for 2011 and today I want to take a look at the best home records of the last decade and also look at some interesting variables. First here is the complete list of all 120 teams for home records.

Read more…

Remember when Oklahoma won the National Title in 2000? Not a single OU starter lost a single start due to injury! My research has shown that teams that benefited from very few injuries, in this case 6 or less, usually have a weaker season the next year.

The bottom line is, teams that have suffered a lot of injuries the previous year will generally have a better year the next season. A lot of backups were forced to play during the injury-riddled year, gaining valuable experience and the team figures to not be so injury-prone the next year.

In a study over the last 7 years, my research shows that if a team had 32 or more starts lost to injury the prior season, they improved or had the same record the next year on 56 out of 67 occasions for an 83.5% success rate. How about teams that are really banged up? Well from 2001-2005 12 teams went through seasons of having 40 or more combined starts lost and ALL 12 had the same or better record the next season. It surprises me that 17 teams met that criteria in 2006-’07 but only 7 had a stronger record the next year and 9 had a weaker record.

In 2008, Utah was at the top of the chart with 51 starts lost to injury and they went from 9-4 to 13-0 and #2 in the country! Last year was another solid year as 9 teams had 35 or more starts lost to injury in ‘09 and 8 of the 9 improved or had the same record (88%!). Here are the teams that suffered 32 or more starts lost to injury last year: Read more…