As you know I’ve always spent about 90% of my time on college football but I am very excited about our NFL Magazine. I have the same desire to mirror my success of being college footballs “most accurate” magazine by becoming the most accurate NFL Magazine as well. In this years magazine (which is now available) I project each of the division races with records. I want to share just how much work and research goes into making these forecasts.

I’ve posted several articles on my blog including: repeating as a division champ and slipping and sliding can help you analyze a teams fortunes. These are just part of the research I do annually to make my predictions. The schedule is of course an important part of analyzing the upcoming season. 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 offensive yards.

There are many factors that contribute to a significant change in total offense. First, a team may see a significant improvement if they return a bunch of experienced starters including their quarterback from a team that was relatively inexperienced the year before. Naturally a team that loses a bunch of starters especially their quarterback, running back and receivers from an experienced team will usually see a drop off in total 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…

First, I want to wish you and your families 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.

Monday Sun Belt 
Tuesday MAC 
Wednesday WAC 
Thursday CUSA 
Yesterday MWC 
Today Big East 
Monday, July 5th Pac-10 
Tuesday, July 6th ACC 
Wednesday, July 7th Big 12 
Thursday, July 8th Big 10 
Friday, July 9th SEC Read more…

Turnovers can have a huge impact on games and on a team’s season. They can also lead to many misleading final scores. During the season I list all of the previous week’s misleading final scores on PhilSteele.com in my Monday Daily Blog. By reading about them each week you can uncover some underrated and overrated teams throughout the season.

Here are a couple of examples from last year. Iowa St benefitted from +8 in TO’s vs Nebraska and pulled out a 9-7 win. Nebraska turned it over 4 times inside the 5 yard line and lost despite a 362-239 yard edge. The next 2 weeks Iowa St was overrated and they lost by a combined 69-18 vs Texas A&M and Oklahoma St despite only being slight underdogs in each.

Florida St appeared to pummel BYU 54-28 on the road but they only had a 512-475 yard edge as they benefitted from +5 in TO’s. The next week FSU entered the Top 25 but lost to USF at home as a 2 TD favorite 17-7 and BYU bounced back with a 42-23 whipping of Colorado St.

Turnovers can not only make a difference in a game but can make the difference between a winning and losing season. Read more…

In 2008, Alabama was only ranked #24 at the start of the year. They were just 7-6 in 2007, had just 12 returning starters and faced a schedule that had four brutal road games. They had to take on the preseason ACC Title favorite Clemson in Atlanta, take on the defending national champ LSU in Death Valley where they would be sky high for Saban’s return, face the defending SEC East Champ Tennessee in Knoxville AND take on the 2008 preseason #1 team Georgia on the road. That does not sound like the recipe to vault into the Top 10 let alone become the #1 team in the country. 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…

For more than 7 years I have published an “Experience Chart” in my National College Football Preview. The old version of this chart just took into account the overall experience from the 2 deep for each squad. Last year I revised the Experience Chart and created a New and Improved version. The new chart uses 20% of the experience grade from the old chart, 20% from the % of lettermen returning, 20% from the % of tackles returning, 20% from the % of yards returning and 20% from the career starts of the offensive line.

The most experienced teams when using the old chart were usually the service academies which play a lot of seniors and juniors. Using the old method (which is listed below) the top 5 most experienced teams in terms of upperclassmen in the two deep are: 1. Hawaii 2. Navy 2. Army 4. UAB and 5. Air Force. Iowa St ranks the highest among BCS teams coming in at #10. Read more…

In Today’s blog, I will continue releasing my Preseason All-Conference teams with the All-Big East and All-MWC teams.

In the Big East, West Virginia leads the way with seven 1st Team selections led by Noel Devine who rushed for 1,465 yds (6.1) last year. Connecticut returns 16 starters from last year’s 8-5 team and placed six guys on my 1st Team led by Lawrence Wilson who led the Big East last year with 140 tackles (#10 NCAA).

The two best teams from last year, Pittsburgh and 2-time defending champ Cincinnati each placed five players on my 1st Team. The Panthers are led by All-American candidates RB Dion Lewis (1,799, 5.5), WR Jon Baldwin (1,111, 19.5) and DE Greg Romeus (Co-BE DPOY) while the Bearcats return many of their top receivers from a year ago led by Armon Binns who had 888 yds (14.6) and 11 TD’s last year. Read more…

We are less than a week away from sending my 2010 College Preview off to the presses! The good news is that once the magazine is off to the press on May 12th, we will go back to doing a blog EVERY DAY until the end of the 2010 College Football season!! Until then I will be giving you a 2010 NFL draft review. Today’s blog gives you a review for the teams in the AFC North. Have a great weekend! Read more…