From 2005-’08 I published an article titled Coaching Changes in my College Football Preview magazine. Each year I try to make the magazine a little bit bigger and a little bit better but we’re capped out at 328 pages so Coaching Changes does not appear in my 2010 magazine. We have had a lot of requests for this article and since the website has an unlimited amount of room, PhilSteele.com is a great vehicle to continue publishing this article and I will do so each year. 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…

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…

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…

The official on sale date for my 2010 College Football Preview was yesterday and if you do not already have a copy, head out to the bookstores and newsstands today. The magazine is available nationwide at Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, Borders, Hastings, Media Play, Target, Books-A-Million, K-Mart and Circle K. There are other locations where we shipped to, so check the magazine section at stores near you. The cost is just $8.95 in the stores but they tend to fly off the shelves. If you’re having trouble finding a copy visit our store or call 1-866-918-7711 and order your copy thru the office (plus shipping). 

The past few weeks I have been giving you some advanced articles from the magazine to wet your appetite for the upcoming year. Today I will give you the results of the Draft Day Party Hangover, which is on page 308.

After several years of research I have found that almost 7 out of every 10 teams that rank among the top in the NCAA in players drafted struggle the next year and have a weaker record. I call it the Draft Day Party Hangover Effect. Read more…

In the past several blogs I have been breaking down each factor that goes into my New and Improved Experience Chart and today I conclude the series by combining the five factors into my final ranking.

For more than 7 years I have 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. Last year I made the experience chart FIVE TIMES better.

We still do the exact same chart but now I just list the Senior starters, the rest of the seniors in the two deep and the points accumulated by using the system I used from 2002-‘08. In the chart listed below I have now included 4 other factors. The 2nd factor listed in the chart below is the % of lettermen returning. I devised a point system for this and explain it in depth on page 319 of this year’s magazine. Also added was the % of returning offensive yards. I took the total yards passing, rushing and receiving for each team and divided out the yardage of the returning players and the yards returning % listed below is that figure. I did the same with the total tackles from last year and the % of tackles returning. This gives us an idea of the defense’s experience. The final factor is the career starts returning for the offensive line. These players are not included in the stats but are a vital part of the offense. Read more…

In today’s blog, I will finish releasing my Preseason All-Conference Teams with the All-SEC and All-SBC Teams.

In the SEC, Defending National Champion Alabama leads the way with six 1st Team selections led by last year’s Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram who rushed for 1,658 yds (6.1) with 17 TD’s. Read more…

Covering college football as I do takes 52 weeks a year as it is and while I personally do not scout the high school games and rate each player I do compile my rankings based on the many different recruiting services across the country that follow and scout HS football year round. I not only like to use all of the biggest and best services, but I also use regional reports as well. The colleges themselves use many of these services to get the latest information on recruits.

When we receive a recruiting magazine, we translate each player’s ranking into a points system from 1-100 and then log each and every player into the computer and give them a point total from each source. Naturally, the more they are mentioned and the higher they are rated by each publication, the more total points they accrue. After months of entering all of this information, I sort the list by position and by total points and then rank the players from most points to least.

In today’s blog I have included the top incoming freshman Kickers/Punters and the Top 75 Incoming Jucos for 2010. Each one of these players is ranked in the Top 500 prospects regardless of position and will appear in my preseason magazine. I have also posted the top individual classes for each position. Since we want the college preview to continue to be the most in-depth and accurate magazine out there, if you find any information that is wrong or if you are questioning a player’s ranking please contact brandon@philsteele.com. I will be back on Friday I with the top 75 overall classes and give you my conference by conference recruiting ratings. Read more…