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. Read more…

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…

The college football season is fast approaching and in today’s blog I will give you a sneak peak at some of the early marquee college football non-conference games and how I think they will shake out as of right now. Also included is your current voting tallies for each of these games.

Remember if you visit the homepage right now, you can get a head start on voting in the Non-Conference Poll with all the non-conference games. 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. In the next day or two the four remaining non-BCS conferences will be added on the front page. The Non-Conference Poll will run until Sunday, Aug 29th. On Monday the 30th, look for the Weekly Polls to start. There are games every day Thursday September 2nd thru Monday September 6th as the first week of the season looks to kick off with a bang! Weekly prizes will be awarded throughout the season. Read more…

A lot of people ask me if I have a favorite team. I was born and raised and still live in Cleveland, Ohio. I was a fan of many teams as a child but now that I put out a National magazine, I cannot afford to be a fan of any team. I have to pick the teams where I think they will finish each year. I was doing a radio show last week and I was asked if I have a favorite team or teams. My response was a strong YES! The interviewer was surprised by that answer and also eager to hear which team I would pick. My answer was my favorite team each year is the team I pick #1 in the magazine and my favorite teams are the ones I have picked higher than all the other major magazines out there. I then said that each year I establish a list of my favorite teams for that year. I then give this list to my wife. I wear a shirt and tie to work every day during the week and my tie is always a college team. I wear polo shirts during the weekend and when not at work and they are always different college teams. The list I give my wife is the ones to buy that I will be wearing for the upcoming year as these are the teams I will be the biggest fan of for the upcoming season. I was then asked “What teams will your wife be buying ties and shirts of this year? That was a great question and I thought I would answer it in a blog. Read more…

I have gotten many requests to do a blog to explain how I compute each teams home field edge in the magazine. I have 27 different factors in my computer’s grade of a team. I then compare the computer’s analysis to my own and make the final decision.
While I mention that there are 27 factors in my home field computer ratings, there are actually nine individual factors that I use each year and I then combine the grades for the last three years giving half of the grade to last year, 30% to the numbers from two years ago and 20% to the computer rankings from three years ago.

Today I will go over the nine different areas that I use to rate home field edge. Read more…

About a month ago I analyzed each teams conference records this past decade. Now lets take a look at home records this decade. First lets get to the chart and then some analysis.

Home Records Past Decade 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 offensive ppg.

There are many factors that contribute to a significant change in offensive ppg. 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 quarterback from an experienced team will usually see a drop off in offensive ppg. 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 offensive pass yards.

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

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…

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…