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Posts Tagged ‘Penn St’

January 2nd Bowl Forecasts!!!

January 2nd, 2012 1 comment

TICKETCITY BOWL
Monday, January 2nd @ 12:00 p.m.
Click on the bowl logo for MORE info!!!!

PENN ST (9-3) VS HOUSTON (12-1)

Rushing
Passing
Points
TO’s
ST
A.O.R
PENN ST 182
150
21
2.4
-
99.2
HOUSTON
98
390
34
2.1
-
91.3
PSU is 2-0 vs UH but the last gm was in ‘77. It’s hard to believe that PSU headed into their bye the B10’s highest ranked tm with a league best 8-1 rec’d (loss to #2 Bama), their BCS destiny in their own hands and the NCAA’s all-time winning HC on the sidelines. The Lions now head into uncharted waters playing in a new bowl for an interim HC for the 1st time in schl hist. Bradley will remain the HC for the bowl. UH, like PSU, controlled its own destiny for bigger and better things. Sumlin was 1-1 in bowls with both being in Dallas but new HC Tony Levine will cch the the Cougs here (was an asst). PSU has played in the Cotton Bowl venue 3x’s (2-0-1) most recently in ‘74. Due to the scandal PSU fell precipitously down the B10 bowl ladder being passed over the players expressed anger at not playing in a more prestigious bowl. UH should draw a nice crowd playing in their home state. PSU is 6-3 vs bowl tms being outscored 18-16 and outgained 324-317 while UH was 5-1 outscored foes 42-28 and outgaining them 506-432. PSU was 4-1 on the road and UH was a perfect 6-0. PSU has a very Sr laden club with 13 among their 20 upperclassmen. UH has 11 Sr st’rs with 15 upperclassmen. If you weight the intangibles section it pretty much sums up this gm. The Cougars may have looked past SM and after thinking BCS for the last month, are now in this bowl. The Lions players gave an initial reaction of disappointment, but fiery interim HC Bradley will turn that around as PSU is an underdog to a CUSA tm.

PHIL’S FORECAST: PENN ST 28 HOUSTON 27

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2011 Homefield Edges

July 28th, 2011 5 comments

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. The first category is the stadium capacity. The largest stadium in the country last year was Penn St which held 107,282 and my computer gave them the maximum score of 6 for that category. My home field edges go from 0 to 6 in the magazine so they have the same scale in the computer. The smallest capacity is Idaho’s Kibbie Dome which seated just 16,000 and they received a 0 in that category. The rest of the capacities are done with a simple equation of Capacity-16,000 divided by 15,250. The reason I divide by 15,250 is that Penn St at 107,282-16,000 = 91,282 and 91,282 divided by 6 (0-6 scale) = 15,214 and I rounded up to get the 15,250. You can figure out what your favorite team is graded in this category by using this simple equation.

The second category is actual attendance reported by the school in 2010. Once again Michigan was at the top with 111,825 and this time the team at the bottom was Ball St which averaged just 8,947 fans per game last year. I used the same method as above to turn this data into a 0 to 6 rating where Michigan received a 6, Ball St a 0 and as an example Florida St with an attendance of 71,270 earned a 4.15 grade. Read more…

Odds to Win 2011-12 BCS National Championship

February 14th, 2011 1 comment

Over the weekend I released my projected preseason AP Top 10 and I thought I would analyze another set of rankings for the upcoming season. A couple of weeks ago, several casinos released their odds for the 2011-12 BCS National Championship. While PhilSteele.com does not affiliate itself with gambling, I do think it is interesting to see how Vegas is examining the upcoming season.

Here are the Top 10 Favorites to win the title this upcoming year courtesy of Bodog.com.

1. Oklahoma             Odds: 7/2

If you checked out my projected AP Top 10 blog, you would have read that the Sooners are clearly the favorite going into next season and the odds certainly agree here. They return 15 starters on off/def including QB Jones, WR Broyles and LB Lewis. Their schedule sets up nicely with a bye before their road trip to Florida St (a team they dominated LY 47-17). In Big 12 play naturally there is the Red River Rivalry game vs Texas who is coming off a 5-7 season and the only other huge hurdle could be the season finale at Oklahoma St but the Sooners have won the Bedlam rivalry 8 straight times and have an overall mark of 82-16-7 vs their in-state rivals. Read more…

January 1st Bowl Forecasts

January 1st, 2011 No comments

Happy New Year!!!

TICKET CITY BOWL
12:00 PM ESPNU
Click bowl logo for MORE info!!!!

NORTHWESTERN (7-5) VS TEXAS TECH (7-5)

Rushing
Passing
Points
TO’s
ST
A.O.R
NORTHWESTERN 156
255
26
2.7
98.1
TEXAS TECH
164
350
37
2.6
-
101.3
This is the inaugural year of the TicketCity Bowl which will be played at the Cotton Bowl and fittingly this is the 1st matchup for these programs. The Raiders return to the post season for the 11th straight year and they are the only team in the Big 12 to be bowl eligible every season in the conference’s existence. Northwestern is headed to its 3rd straight bowl under Fitzgerald and he has made it the program’s goal to win a bowl game for the 1st time S/’48 (lost L/7). TT played Baylor in this stadium on Oct 9th beating the bowl bound Bears 45-38 while this is the Cats 1st trip here. TT will have a significant crowd edge as Lubbock is a 6 hr drive from Dallas and they have many alums in the area.

After throwing the game winning TD pass to knock off Iowa, Persa ruptured his Achilles tendon. Persa had accounted for 75.5% of NW’s offense and his 73.5% comp set a school record and is #2 in B10 history. His replacement is 6’6” pocket passer Watkins who hit 129 (55%) with a 1-4 ratio (49 rush) in his 2 starts and the Cats actually burned the RS off the more mobile Colten for the L/2. The 2 QB’s comb for 6 TO’s in the finale loss to Wisky and Ftizgerald vowed the squad would get right back to work with practice so the frosh QB’s could get more experience before the bowl. On defense NW finished #36 pass eff D (231, 59%, 21-14) led by #1 tkl’r S Peters and top cover CB Mabin. K Demos struggled at times (missing 2 FG’s in the Purdue loss) and would like to atone for missing the potential GW in LY’s wild OT bowl loss to Auburn. P Williams is #3 B10 in net (38.2) with good placement (18 FC).

Tuberville vowed to keep the Air Raid offense but he added more of an emphasis on the run game and after running for over 140 yds in a game 18x in the previous 10Y, the Raiders did it 7x TY led by the combo of Batch and Stephens. The pass #’s shrunk as expected -72 ypg although QB Potts finished as the B12’s #3 passer. The D also had a major scheme change as they went to a 3-4. Depth was a major issue and Tuberville numerous times bemoaned the unit’s lack of speed until he eventually said the best way for them to win was to simply outscore people. Inj’s really hit the secondary hard as TT’s pass D finished dead last in the FBS ypg all’d although they were #87 in my pass eff D (306, 62%, 27-14). TT was #36 in ST’s even though they allowed onside K’s to be ret’d for TD’s in B2B gms vs ISU and Baylor. P LaCour’s net of 38.8 was #16 NCAA and KR Stephens remains 1 of the B12’s best.

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Early Look at the Marquee Non-Conference Games

August 18th, 2010 4 comments

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…

My Favorite Teams for 2010!

August 12th, 2010 8 comments

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…

2010′s Homefield Edges

August 9th, 2010 No comments

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…

2010 Updated Bowl Projections 11/29!

July 18th, 2010 13 comments

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…

Big 10 Team of the Decade

July 8th, 2010 No comments

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…

2009′s Final Computer Poll vs AP Poll

June 21st, 2010 3 comments

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…