Who Faced the Toughest Schedule in 2010?
What makes my Toughest Opponents Faced rankings far superior to the NCAA method is that ours takes into account 9 sets of power ratings, combines them and factors in every team’s schedule this year. I did this not only for the bowl teams, but for all the NCAA teams & found out which teams played the toughest schedules this year.
2010′s Toughest Schedules
*Bowl Teams are in Bold 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…
Categories: College Football Forecasts, College Football Picks Tags: Alabama, Arizona St, Auburn, blog, Boise St, Clemson, college football, Connecticut, Florida St, Forecasts, LSU, Marquee Games, Miami Fl, Michigan, Non-Conference Polls, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Ohio St, Oklahoma, Oregon, Oregon St, Penn St, phil steele, Pittsburgh, TCU, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia Tech, wisconsin
First, I hope you and your families are having a very happy and safe 4th of July weekend!
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…
As you can tell by going through the magazine there is very little advertising and there are several pages that are left out due to space constraints. One article I wanted to expand on was starters lost during the year. (see Football 365 Days A Year Pg 17, 314)
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 6 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 48 out of 58 occasions for an 82.8% 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 11 teams had 40 or more starts lost to injury in ‘08 and 8 of the 11 improved their records (72.7%!). Here are the teams that suffered 32 or more starts lost to injury last year:
Read more…
Categories: Offseason Notes Tags: college football, Colorado St, Idaho, Illinois, Oklahoma, Oregon St, phil steele, Starts Lost, Temple, Tulsa, Utah, Washington St, Wyoming
In Today’s blog I will start releasing my Preseason All Conference teams with the PAC-10 and Independent teams.
The Pac-10 is very balanced this year as nine of the ten teams (Washington St) have a player on my 1st Team. Washington leads the way with five players led by QB Jake Locker. USC and Arizona both have four players on my 1st Team while Oregon, Oregon St, UCLA and Stanford each have 3 players.
Oregon St RB Jacquizz Rodgers and WR James Rodgers both appear on my preseason 1st Team for the 2nd year in a row as well as USC OC Kristofer O’Dowd, California LB Mike Mohamed, UCLA K Kai Forbath and California P Bryan Anger.
Read more…
Categories: Phil Steele News Tags: All Conference Teams, Arizona, Arizona St, Armando Allen, army, California, college football, Darrin Walls, independent, Jacquizz Rodgers, Jake Locker, James Rodgers, Navy, Notre Dame, Oregon, Oregon St, pac 10, phil steele, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington St, Wyatt Middleton
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.
Also check out the bowl matchup section to get the latest and greatest information on all the upcoming bowl games including, game by game stats, 2009 recaps, and checklists for every position and intangible.
There were very few games this week so it wasn’t as tough to earn a Top 20 spot from my computer’s average individual grades as there was only 34 performances to grade. Therefore, I will cut it off at the Top 14 this week.
Read more…
Categories: News & Notes Tags: 2 point conversion, Arizona, Boise St, bowl confidence poll, cal, California, Cincinnati, college football, Connecticut, Fresno St, fresno st 2 point, Hawaii, Illinois, New Mexico St, Oregon, Oregon St, phil steele, philsteele.com, pitt, Pittsburgh, rutgers, South Florida, uconn, USC, USF, Washington, West Virginia, wisconsin
Navy QB Dobbs has a small crack in his kneecap from a prior inj in HS that will have to be repaired, but he is hoping to play thru the injury and have it fixed after the season….
Michigan’s Rich Brooks isn’t hiding his quarterback decision this week. He’s said true frosh Morgan Newton will start….
S Carolina is looking to avenge last year’s loss to Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is coming off a 34-10 loss to Georgia and South Carolina’s 20-6 loss at Alabama….
Read more…
Categories: News & Notes Tags: acc, Akron, Alabama, Arizona, Arizona St, Baylor, Big 12 North Title, Boise St, Boston College, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Central Michigan, Cincinnati, Clemson, college football, Colorado, Connecticut, Dan Marino, Doyt Perry Stadium, Duke, Erickson, Florida Atlantic, gameday, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, Houston, Idaho, Indiana, individual game ratings, Iowa, Iowa St, Jasper Howard, Jordan White, Kansas St, Kent State, Louisiana, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisville, LSU, Maryland, Miami, Michigan, Michigan St, Mike Riley, Mississippi, Missouri, Navy, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico St, Notre Dame, Ohio St, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Oregon, Oregon St, Penn St, Petersen, phil steele, Pittsburgh, SEC Championship Game, South Carolina, Stanford, Sumlin, Syracuse, Temple, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Toledo, Troy, Tulsa, UAB, UCF, UCLA, ULL, USF, Utah St, Vanderbilt, Vanerbilt, Washington St, West Virginia, Western Michigan
Hawaii was starting their 3rd string QB, Bryant Moniz, a walk-on and they trailed Fresno St 42-3 mid-4Q before they got a TD with 7:25 left. The Warriors recovered an onside kick and got another TD with 4:42 left. Fresno St recovered the final onside attempt and finished the game at the Hawaii 22. FSU led 28-3 at the half despite only having a 249-171 yard edge as UH had a 43 yard FG blocked, Moniz was intercepted in the endzone and they also settled for a 33 yard FG. It was 21-3 when Hawaii fumbled a punt at their own 30 with 1:39 left in the half which set up a 17 yd TD pass from Colburn to West with :11 left.
Read more…
Categories: News & Notes Tags: acc, Air Force, Arizona, Arizona St, big 10, big 12, big east, college football, conference usa, fbs, FCS, Florida A&M, Florida St, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, Iowa, Kent St, Kentucky, MAC confererence, Miami Fl, North Texas, Oklahoma St, Ole Miss, Oregon St, pac 10, phil steele, SEC, Southern Miss, Stanford, TCU, Toledo, Utah St, UTEP, wac, Wake Forest, Washington St