By Phil Steele

Today Air Force and Rice being the bowl day in the Armed Forces Bowl. After that stay with the service academies as Navy takes on Arizona St in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. Then West Virginia plays Syracuse in the Pinstripe Bowl. Oregon St and Texas square off in the Alamo Bowl. And finally, TCU meets Michigan St in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl to close the evening. Each day there is a bowl I will have a breakdown of the game here on my blog. But if you can’t wait for the actual writeup, make sure you download my FREE Bowl Guide which gives you a glimpse of each game being played this bowl season. The Bowl Guide includes Stat Leaders, Past Meetings, Bowl Records, Game By Game Stats and Previous Bowl Game Results. Everything you need for this post season at your fingertips! Here is the forecast for today’s bowls. Make sure you check back on Monday for the New Year’s Eve forecasts and download that Bowl Guide today!

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By Phil Steele

GAMES NOTES:

Ball St solidified its bowl standing and Ohio’s banged up team kept sliding. The Bobcats missed as many as 10 players due to injury but did only trail 21-17 at the half. Ball St lost their starting QB Keith Wenning who hit 16-20-172. Veteran Kelly Page came in and ran 7 yards for a td on his only play of the 1H and OU did get to the BSU12 with :12 left in the half but was sacked on the final play and did not score. OU got a 58 yd td run by Blankenship on the first drive of the 2H to take a 24-21 lead but Ball got a 68 yd Edwards run keying a 71/2pl drive for a td and OU missed a 27 yd FG. After 2 punts, BSU went 59/10pl for a 38 yd FG and OU went on an 11pl drive for a 34 yd FG, 31-27. Ball, after a 46 yard KR and a 15 yd penalty on a personal foul, drove 38/1pl for a td then after a punt went 65/6pl for a td and after OU went 3&out again, went 77/8pl for a td and turned it into a 52-27 rout with 2:18 left. Page hit just 5-7-41 rushing 4x’s for 34 yards.

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GAMES NOTES:

Ohio was coming off its first loss of the year and rolled up Eastern Michigan with a 555-305 yard edge. It was just 17-14 when OU took over with :55 left in the half and went 65/7pl and on 2&10 got a 19 yd td pass with :11 left to lead 24-14. EMU in the 3Q went on a 14pl drive but punted and OU got a 3&5, def pass interference for a FD and on the next play a 79 yd td pass, 31-14. OU drove 44/5 for a td after a 38 yd PR with 5:03 left and got a 29 yd td run with 1:33 left.

Middle Tennessee and WKU played on a Thursday and MT pulled the first upset of the weekend. MT settled for a 19 yd FG on a 73/13pl drive to open and after a punt the teams would score td’s on 4 straight poss. WKU settled for a 29 yd FG, MT on 4&1 was SOD at the WKU32 with :32 left in the half and WKU missed a 47 yd FG on the final play of the half and it was 17-17. The game was tied 27-27 after a 27 yd WKU FG with 6:17 left but MT had a 96 yd KR for a 7 pt lead. WKU went 57/10pl but from the 21 yard line on FD was int’d at the 2. MT on 4&9 ran the ball into the back of the EZ for a safety on the last play of the game. WKU finished with a 438-342 yd edge.

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GAMES NOTES:

I will admit when I’m wrong and last week I thought Texas had a great situational advantage. I thought Texas, with their defense would be able to handle West Virginia at home and win the game more comfortably than most thought before a record crowd of 101,851. WV finished with a 26-21 FD edge and 460-404 yd edge. After WV had a 40 yd FG blk’d they attempted to go for it numerous times on 4th down and met with success almost every time. On their 3rd drive they converted on 4&2 at midfield then on 4&4 were stopped but UT called time-out prior and on the next play WV got a 40 yd td pass. Texas led 28-27 at half and got the ball to open the 3Q and appeared to be in good shape going 54/13pl and settled for a 36 yd FG. WV’s 2nd 3Q poss converted on 4&6 and 4&1 on a 76/12pl drive for a td, 41-38 (10:50) UT was SOD on 4&13 and then a key play happened when on 3&6 from the WV 8 the snap got past QB Ash and he fell on it for a 16 yd loss. That forced a 41 yd FG and they missed and WV went 76/8pl as UT couldn’t get them off the field. Perhaps their most impressive player in the game was Andrew Buie who constantly broke tackles and rushed for 207 yards although Geno Smith is clearly the frontrunner for the Heisman hitting 25-35-268 yards. Hats off to WV for going into a hostile environment and beating a pretty good Texas team and they deserve to be in the Top 5.

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Here are my projections for games being played on Saturday, October 6th.

I list the projected scores from my computers forecast. Another column shows you the computers yardage forecast for each game. I think it will be interesting to see who the computer picks to win the yardage battle and see if they win the game. In my College Football magazine I have the plus and minus ratings. I update them weekly and then factor in the home edge and I will show you who the Plus Minus ratings forecast. I will also list who Vegas has favored to win each week and we can see how they do picking the actual winners of games. There is also a WEEKLY POLL which you can enter for free each week.

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GAME NOTES

Stanford went on the road for the first time and led 13-3 late 3Q but on a key play of the game, Washington on 4&1 got a 61 yd Sankey td run to get back in it. They later got a 35 yd td pass with 4:54 left and SU’s last gasp was a 4&4 incomplete pass with 1:46 left. Josh Nunes hit 18-37-170. It was UW’s first win over a top 10 team since 2009 and the student section poured on to the turf of CenturyLink Field at the end and actually gave them more of a home field edge than I thought they would playing away from their home stadium this year. UW finished with a 313-235 yd edge and 13-10 FD edge.

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Today’s blog starts my in-depth look at my New and Improved Experience Chart. For 7 years I had listed an experience chart, which broke down the number of seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen each team had in the two deep and rated the teams experience level with a formula I devised. In 2009, I made the experience chart FIVE TIMES better.

Today I will look at the returning letterman/lost percentages.

Last year I went back and looked at percentages of lettermen returning and lost. Using percentages is more reliable than the amount of returning or lost lettermen because schools give out letters in different manners. Some schools hand out a lot of letters and others far fewer. Getting a letter at Syracuse under Paul Pasqualoni was tough, as he handed out just 38 total letters in 2004 and 40 in 2003. This year the low’s went to Ball St with 46 while Connecticut under Pasqualoni had 49. Nebraska in 2001 handed out 82 letters or over double what Syracuse was giving out. It was also the most given out by any school in the previous 6 years. In 2007, Ohio broke all records with an amazing 91 letters given out while Hawaii had 90! Last year BYU was number one with 89 total letters given out while Florida St was #2 with 88.

Returning Letterman/Lost %

UTSA is #1 here in % of lettermen returning with 53 of 62 players back (85.48%). This should come as no surprise as they are just a 2nd-year program. I expect big things out of Florida this year and the Gators are #2 with 55 out of 65 lettermen returning (84.62%). At the bottom of the rankings is Navy which returns only 51.35% of their lettermen. This should not come as a concern though to Midshipmen fans as typically the Service Academies are among the lowest when it comes to returning experience. What is surprising is that probable preseason AP #1 USC sits at #123 as they lose 26 lettermen (56.25%) from last year and Notre Dame is #121 losing an incredible 31 lettermen.

Please check PhilSteele.com everyday to get my Top 40 Countdown which continued today with #18 Stanford and #17 Nebraska. Every day now thru June 12th, I will post both magazine pages on each team that day and you can get an early look on how I breakdown your favorite team. Remember I will make those magazine pages available for only 24 hours for you to download.

First, I will say that I voted for Trent Richardson on my Heisman ballot and believe this year will be similar to 2005 when Reggie Bush won the Heisman but after the national title game, Vince Young with his dominating performance vs USC would have been the winner on 95% of the ballots. Richardson had a great game in the first meeting with 169 yds vs an outstanding LSU defense and this time I expect him to have even a bigger game.  What’s more impressive about Richardson’s season was the fact that he faced 8 Top 50 D’s incl 5 in the top 20 and D’s keyed in on him as they were unafraid of QB McCarron.

I am projecting that Baylor’s Robert Griffin III will win the Heisman and there is no doubt that he has had a great season for the Bears. I do think that some of the Heisman voters wait until the last minute to vote and valued Griffin’s big game vs Texas more than any other game. The reason I did not vote for Griffin was the fact that he did not face many Top 40 D’s and Baylor lost 3 games including trailing Oklahoma St 35-0 at HT and lost to 6-6 A&M by 27. He is surrounded by some great talent including RB Ganaway who had 1,300+ yds and an incredible WR in Wright who catches anything within 20 yards of him. Read more…

Each day during bowl season in my daily blog, I will give you my forecasts on the bowl games taking place that day. My forecasts will include a detailed write-up with my computer’s projected box score including rushing and passing yards, points and turnovers along with a detailed write-up on each game.

Please make sure to check PhilSteele.com everyday for complete information and coverage on all the bowl matchups. On the homepage click on the Bowl matchups link, where you will find all 35 bowl games. Click on the bowl logo for each game to get all the information you need to become an expert!

Also I just put up my 2011 NFL Draft Preview with the top 10 prospects at each of the positions. Take a look now to see where your favorite player is ranked and get a sneak peek at who will be taken in the early rounds next April. Read more…

Today’s blog will continue with my series of analyzing 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 breakdown total defensive yards.

There are many factors that contribute to a significant change in total defense. First, a team may see a significant improvement if they return a bunch of experienced starters from a team that was relatively inexperienced the year before. Naturally a team that loses a bunch of starters especially their star players from an experienced team will usually see a drop off in total defense. Read more…