Over the weekend the preseason AP Top 25 was released with defending national champ Alabama 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. 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…

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…

In the June 19-20 blog I discussed my power ratings system, which lets me analyze at what level each team played during an individual game. This “game grade” takes into account the yards rushing, yards passing, points scored, rushing yards allowed, passing yards allowed and points allowed and factors them in against the opponent played and even factors in the site the game was played at.

One of the main factors in this “game grade” deals with total ypg differential (total off-total def). Naturally, a team that outgains their opponents by a large margin over the course of the season will receive a higher game grade average. While this is just one factor that goes into my overall game grade it got me wondering what were some of the best seasons in the last decade for teams outgaining their opponents.

Here are the best 50 seasons in the last decade (’00-’09) for outgaining opponents on the season. Read more…

At the end of the 2008 season we devised a formula which plugged in the stats from the just completed season and then factored in the opponents and the site the game was played at and came up with an individual team power rating for each game. I was very pleased that the formula did indeed assign a true power rating for each game and it was highly accurate.

In the weekend blog, I gave you the top 15 individual “game grade” performances from 2009. Today I will give you the teams with the highest game grade averages from last year, which make up my computer’s final Top Ten and compare it to the AP Final Top Ten.

First here is the final AP Top Ten from last year. Read more…

When it comes to college football, I am a traditionalist.  The one thing I love about college football is of all the sports, college or pro, the regular season in college football is the one that means the most. I also love the rivalries and the tradition of the bowls. While I have been calling for a system that pits the #1 vs #4 and #2 vs #3 teams in the Jan 1 bowls for nearly a decade, I am vehemently against an 8 or 16 team playoff which would destroy the bowls and make the regular season meaningless.

In 1995 I was actually sad to see the SWC fold as I really enjoyed the great tradition and history of that conference.

From the recent news of Nebraska joining the Big Ten and Colorado heading to the Pac-10, it looks like college football re-alignment and expansion is going forward and I think it will move quickly. However, unlike some of the past radical changes to college football, I actually look forward to seeing which programs end up where and I salivate at the possibility of there being multiple super conferences. Read more…

THE POLLS ARE OPEN!!!

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!!!! Read more…

The official on sale date for my 2010 College Football Preview was yesterday and if you do not already have a copy, head out to the bookstores and newsstands today. The magazine is available nationwide at Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, Borders, Hastings, Media Play, Target, Books-A-Million, K-Mart and Circle K. There are other locations where we shipped to, so check the magazine section at stores near you. The cost is just $8.95 in the stores but they tend to fly off the shelves. If you’re having trouble finding a copy visit our store or call 1-866-918-7711 and order your copy thru the office (plus shipping). 

The past few weeks I have been giving you some advanced articles from the magazine to wet your appetite for the upcoming year. Today I will give you the results of the Draft Day Party Hangover, which is on page 308.

After several years of research I have found that almost 7 out of every 10 teams that rank among the top in the NCAA in players drafted struggle the next year and have a weaker record. I call it the Draft Day Party Hangover Effect. Read more…

In today’s blog, I will finish releasing my Preseason All-Conference Teams with the All-SEC and All-SBC Teams.

In the SEC, Defending National Champion Alabama leads the way with six 1st Team selections led by last year’s Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram who rushed for 1,658 yds (6.1) with 17 TD’s. Read more…