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…

THE POLLS ARE OPEN!!!

The last couple of years I have I put up a poll for everyone to pick who would win each conference game during the year. I found these results fascinating prior to the year. When you vote in the poll, it tabulates the current % of votes for each team in each individual game. Here are the results of the fan poll from 2009.

When initially reviewing the results I was quite impressed with the accuracy as you the fans did quite well in numerous conferences. In fact, when I calculated the results (similar to what stassen.com does for all the major preseason college football magazines) you guys finished #1!!!! Read more…

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…

Spring practice is nearly wrapped up for all the teams so make sure to check out our Spring Central Section to get the latest details surrounding your favorite team. Coming soon is our interesting tidbit section, which will detail several different factors like the Top Winningest Active Coaches, Top Home/Away and top individual performers over the last 5 years.

The NFL draft is less than a week and my NFL Draft Guide is complete with more than a 100 pages filled with the latest and greatest information on this year’s draft! It includes position by position rankings, combine invites, pro day workouts and an updated 2-round Mock Draft!  While my NFL Draft Guide would probably sell for $6.95 on the newsstands you candownload the entire guide for free at PhilSteele.com!

Josh Buchanan who runs JBScouting.com does a great job following FCS football and he contributes significantly to my FCS preview. Josh also has scouted for the Texas vs. Nation Game and East Coast Bowl the last few years and has interned with the Carolina Panthers. He has just released finished his small school draft guide with nearly 200 pages of jampacked infomation exclusively on this year’s small school top players! You can purchase his guide by clicking here.

In the magazine on each team we include a chart of various offensive/defensive stats from the last 7 years. Included in this chart is the number of returning starters, offensive/defensive ppg, total turnovers, and sack totals.

Today’s blog will take a closer look at defensive ppg for all 120 teams over the last 5 years. Here are the…. Read more…

We are just about a month away from sending off my 2010 College Preview Magazine to the printers and it’s a very busy time of year for us with all the magazine deadlines.

Spring practice is nearly wrapped up for all the teams so make sure to check out our Spring Central Section to get the latest details surrounding your favorite team. Coming soon is our interesting tidbit section, which will detail several different factors like the Top Winningest Active Coaches, Top Home/Away and top individual performers over the last 5 years.

The NFL draft is less than a week and my NFL Draft Guide is complete with more than a 100 pages filled with the latest and greatest information on this year’s draft! It includes position by position rankings, combine invites, pro day workouts and an updated 2-round Mock Draft!  While my NFL Draft Guide would probably sell for $6.95 on the newsstands you candownload the entire guide for free at PhilSteele.com!

In the magazine on each team we include a chart of various offensive/defensive stats from the last 7 years. Included in this chart is the number of returning starters, offensive/defensive ppg, total turnovers, and sack totals.

Today’s blog will take a closer look at offensive ppg for all 120 teams over the last 5 years. Here are the…. 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 WRs and TEs 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. In Friday’s Blog I will post the top OL and DL.

Read more…

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.

Today’s blog will give you the first look at which teams will be losing the most players to this year’s draft and which teams might suffer from the Draft Day Party Hangover Effect that appears in my magazine every year.

While the draft is not until April and several players could move up or down on draft boards, I think this early edition will give you a first look to see which teams will be losing the most players to the draft and it maybe a precursor for trouble for many college programs.

For the system I have created, 7 points are awarded if a player was picked in the 1st round. A 2nd round pick garners 5 points, a 3 round pick four, 4th round three and a 5th round two.  In the NFL there’s not much difference between a 6th or 7th round pick and a high quality undrafted free agent signee so I award 1 point to a 6th or 7th round pick. If you need more information please refer to pg 308 in last year’s College Preview magazine. 

Here are the teams that could lose the most possible points in this years draft and again these numbers could change over the next 6 weeks. The numbers in each column represent the number of players being projected right now in each round. Read more…

National signing day was yesterday as the top rated high school players all over the country signed with their favorite school. It is one of the most important days of the year for each college team as usually the teams with the best recruiting classes year in and year out usually find themsevles in the Top 25.

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.

While my final recruiting rankings will not be completed for another month, several recruiting sources that I use have released their Top 10 ratings for 2010. Read more…

In Monday’s Blog I gave you the teams with the best odds to win the 2010 national championship courtesy of The Hilton in Las Vegas. In today’s blog is the current list for Returning Starters for each team in 2010 broken down by offense, defense and special teams. The * on the offense number denotes that the starting QB is returning. Below the alphabetical list I broke down teams with the most/least returning starters followed by a conference by conference breakdown.

Please make sure to check out our team schedules for next year. On the left side of the home page under 2010 click onSchedules/13 Year Logs and go to your favorite conference to get schedules for all your teams for 2010. Click on any game to get all the games played between the two teams in the last 13 years with complete statistics including first downs, rushing, passing, sacks, TO’s and much more.

Because we want all the information to be complete and accurate as possible, if you see any games we have missed for next seasons’ schedules or if there have been any recent changes to your favorite teams 2010 schedule please email Brandon@philsteele.com and we’ll get it corrected.

Also don’t forget to check out our Spring Central section to get 2010 schedules, coaching changes, who’s back/who’s not and all the NFL Draft early entrants.

I will be back later this week with all the Senior Bowl/Pro Bowl coverage you need to prepare you for this weekend’s games. On Monday I will expand on the Hilton’s odds to win the 2010 BCS National Championship and give you a breakdown of each of the 50 teams including key starters back/lost.

Read more…