The AP Poll was released over the weekend and today I can officially come up with Overrated and Underrated teams for the upcoming year.

First, here is the Preseason AP Top 25.

Overrated Teams

#23 Auburn-There are several signs pointing downward for last year’s defending champ. This year they lose the best offensive player in the NCAA in Heisman winner QB Cam Newton as well as arguably the best defensive player in DT Nick Fairley. Auburn also benefited from an amazing 7 net close wins and naturally the schedule gets tougher with road games vs Clemson, South Carolina, Arkansas, LSU and Georgia. They lose an incredible 31 lettermen and return just 6 starters (fewest in the country). Last year I had Texas as my #1 overrated team (preseason AP #5) and they went from the National Title game to 5-7 and Auburn will have to have some talented youngsters grow up quickly to avoid a similar fate

#22 Florida-After an 8-5 season (NR) former head coach Meyer stepped down due to health concerns and they bring a new HC in Muschamp who has no previous HC experience and just 10 returning starters. The Gators have just 3 SEC HG’s and play South Carolina and UGA away from home and pull the top two teams (Bama and LSU) out of the West. I think UF may have a tough time topping last year’s 8 wins and will not finish in the AP Top 25 at the end of the year.

#9 Oklahoma St-Last year I took a lot of flack for picking the Cowboys last in the Big 12 South but nearly every magazine picked them 5th or 6th as they were one of the more inexperienced teams in the country. Naturally they went on to a great season with their first 11-win season in school history. This year they return 2 of their 3 “triplets” in Weeden and Blackmon but OSU loses OC Holgorsen and RB Hunter from an off avg 44.2 ppg, which was their best since 1988. OSU was also +12 in TO’s, has five Big 12 away games (incl at Texas A&M, Texas, Missouri, and Texas Tech) and only had 2 starts lost to injury last year. They do get Oklahoma at home again this year but were outgained by 209 yds to the Sooners last year. There is no question that the Cowboys are very talented but because of having such a tough B12 schedule I do not have them in my Top 15. Read more…

Over the weekend the preseason AP Top 25 was released with defending national champ Alabama clearly ranked #1. Every year I am particularly intrigued by who is placed in the preseason AP Top 10 as I try to predict what those teams will be shortly after the previous season is completed.

Most AP voters usually look at a couple of criteria when they evaluate a team for the upcoming season. First they look at the number of returning starters that the team has coming back particularly at the offensive skill positions. A team that returns its starting QB and a combination of its RB and WRs is often times more highly thought of than a team that loses its starting QB but returns its entire offensive line. Similarly a team that returns most of its starters on offense but loses a lot of its defensive playmakers usually is more highly thought of than a team that returns a majority of its defensive starters but loses its skill position players on offense. 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…

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…

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. 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…

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…