This is going to be fun...

While I'm an advocate for completely doing away with the coaches poll, the AFCA has done the next best thing by de-classifying the ballots of each coach in the final poll. How fun is it going to be to see where there is conference allegiances among the coaches, whether rivalries carry over to the ballot box, and which coach has clearly paid the least attention to the college football landscape (remember basketball coach Rick Marjerus voting for Temple a few years ago?)

While this does a little bit for the credibility of the poll, more than anything, its going to be very interesting to dissect the patterns to which we've never had access before.

It's Never Too Early

My favorite site of all-time put up one of the first comprehensive TV schedules I've seen this year. While I'll be posting a more complete (and visually appealing) schedule here in the coming weeks, be sure to at least take note of this one.

You've got to love opening weekend. Three televised games on Friday, scads on Saturday, four on Sunday and two on Monday. Ahh, the first weekend of the year....the only time a network can put Duke/East Carolina on cable TV at noon on a Saturday and pull the late summer football-starved crowd into watching the entire game. I love it.

Hate the Average, not the game

I've always had a little bit of an issue with the way defensive units are usually evaluated and ranked in terms of passing defense and rushing defense. While identifying the best team in each category is certainly a noble cause, and useful when breaking down matchups, the use of yards per game in either of those categories is quite a poor barometer of a teams success using or against the pass or the rush.

Remember the mid to late 1990s WAC? I'm talking even pre-ESPN2 10:00 p.m. Saturday night games featuring Pam Ward. It wasn't unusual to see 100 combined points and 5 hours of play in the intra-conference games. Quarterbacks like Josh Wallwork (Wyoming), Jon Denton (UNLV), Billy Blanton (SDSU) and Steve Sarkisian (BYU) were at the top of the NCAA Total Offense list, but no one had heard of any of them, and most still haven't. The defenses were flat out horrible, yet it wasn't impossible to give up 42 points in a game and only 130 rushing yards, which would have landed a team near the top 25 rushing defenses in the country.

The problem? The variable of rushing or passes attempts per game completely invalidates the use of the yds. per game statistic in terms of evaluating team units against the run and the pass. I'm not sure why the media, schools or whomever is in charge of affecting statistic usage trends, haven't began using the statistic of using yards per carry or per pass. The only place this average is really used widely is in evaluating individual offensive skill players. It only makes sense to extend it to team defense, given the fact that the colege football world can be regionalized when it comes to passing/rushing frequencies.

While one could make the same argument for team offenses, I think the ypg and ypc/ypa stats both have a place when it comes to that side of the ball.

An example of the defensive evaluation problem:

Last year, Boise St. had the #10 rushing defense in the nation according to the ypg method. Although the WAC isn't as singleminded about passing as it once was, Boise St. still saw fewer rushing attempts than all but one team in the nation (only Cal saw less). As we saw in the Liberty Bowl, once the Broncos saw a strong (and frequent) running team, they weren't able to put up the great per-game numbers.

If we considered YPC numbers when calculating the Rushing Defense numbers, Boise St. moves from #10 in the nation to #33.

So whenever I refer to defensive rushing/passing unit rankings here, I'll be using the ypc/ypa method.

Just for fun, here are the teams that were most inaccurately classified last year, for better or for worse, thanks to the use of an innacurate measuring stick (2004 ypg rank indicated):

2004 Rushing Defense

Overrated
Boise St. (#10)
South Carolina (#43)

Underrated
Miami (#67)
Clemson (#41)


2004 Passing Defense

Overrated
San Jose St. (#18)
Mississippi St. (#11)

Underrated
Iowa (#39)
Ohio St. (#41)

Weekly Roundup

Sonny Lubick doesn't like the fact that his team is going to face Air Force on an ESPN Thursday night game, and the Mountain West doesn't like the fact that Lubick told everyone he doesn't like it. Got it?

Temple has joined the MAC effective 2007, although they will be quasi-members this year as they've scheduled nearly half their games against MAC opponents.

SI's Stuart Mandel didn't rank Texas A & M, Oregon or Alabama in his post-Spring top 25, but he admits he may regret that decision later.

In Mandel's mailbag, he gets into what I call the "Adonis Jordan" rule. Adonis Jordan was a point guard at Kansas in the early nineties, and my friends and I could have sworn that he started for the Jayhawks for 9 years. Those guys are all over College Sports. Some recent examples in football include Chris Rix, Arnaz Battle, Vince Carter (OU Center), and many others. Here's Mandel's list of "11th year seniors"

-Fresno St. QB Paul Pinegar (he's been starting since the David Carr year)

-Texas DL Rodrique Wright (remember in about 1995 when Texas had that 30-something year old posing as a college football player? I think this guy and Larry Dibbles are doing this again)

-Washington St. LB Will Dierting (he's still mad he wasn't able to stop Brian Greise in the 97 Rose Bowl)

-Oregon QB Kellen Clemmons (I honestly think he played alongside Joey Harringon for a while)

-Penn St. QB Michael Robinson (not only has he been there for 8 years, he's played a different position each year)

No goal unattainable in the Big XII North

Could it be that 5, or even all 6 teams in the Big XII North can look ahead to 2005 with a legit shot of taking the division crown? With the arguable exception of Kansas, every team in the North has a realistic goal of travelling to Houston to represent the division on December 3rd (be sure to note the Big XII CCG lost its prime time spot to the new ACC title game, so the Big XII game will kickoff at 12 p.m. CST--don't plan any Christmas shopping trips that day).

Iowa State was a gimme Field Goal away from the CCG last year and the Clones return a lot of the ingredients to their 2004 success including Todd Blythe and Bret Meyer, not to mention 8 of 11 starters on defense. In fact, they may be the trendy pick this summer.

Kansas State loses Darren Sproles, but returns its two headed quarterback in addition to the best linebacking corps in the North. Despite the 4-7 record last year, most of the losses were decided on a few plays, and they weren't completely dominated very often (save the last game of the year when they mailed it in against Iowa State in the second half).

Colorado has Joel Klatt back for what already seems like his 8th year and they are defending champs. If Gary Barnett was able to put together a championship last year amidst all that was going on, its far from a stretch to believe that he could do it again. For the first time in a long time they'll be heading into the season without a real battle-tested RB, so that may hinder their ground attack.

Missouri still has Brad Smith, and even though Gary Pinkel almost lost his job for what many thought was his misutilization of the star quarterback, having an experienced Smith puts Missouri in the race, despite a Defense agape with holes. Don't believe it? Go back and watch a tape of Mizzou/Texas Tech from 2003. Smith can take a game over even if his defense doesn't make a stop if given the opporunity.

Nebraska is as unpredicatble as possible. Last year they ran a new offense with a quarterback who was not right for the system. This year, they've supposedly got their man in Zac Taylor, and its conceivable that eliminating, say, 25 turnovers this year would give their record a 2-game swing, which would have been enough, even last year.

Kansas looked very tough at times last year (almost took out a future Rose Bowl Champ Texas, despite the Longhorns were playing for a BCS berth). Adam Barmann should take the reigns back, and he showed a ton of promise in 2003. Kansas probably isn't a real threat to win the division, although a year ago, neither was Iowa State.

There's almost no way you can rule any team coming into tihs season which makes this division more unique than any other Conference Division in the country. Of the conferences that have divided into regional divisions, none can boast (if boasting would be appropriate for this) 6 teams that come into the season as legitimate division championship teams:

Consider that the following teams, with no realistic chance to win their division, exist in the other divisionalized conferences:

Big XII South: Baylor, Oklahoma State
ACC Atlantic: Wake Forest, Clemson
ACC Coastal: Duke, North Carolina
SEC East: Kentucky, Vanderbilt
SEC West: Ole Miss, Mississippi St.
C-USA East: East Carolina, UCF
C-USA West: Tulane, SMU
MAC East: Ohio, Kent St.
MAC West: Western Michigan, Ball St.

I'll bet you dollars to donuts none of the teams on those lists even sniffs their respective CCG. I won't make the same bet about any team in the Big XII North.

Another one bites the dust...

Joining the likes of Nebraska, Notre Dame, BYU, USC and several other tradition-laden schools in the last five years, Michigan has decided to tweak its uniforms that had gone seemingly unchanged as long as most of us can remember.

Some other changes to look for this year.:


-Pittsburgh is back to "Pitt" on their logos and helmets. The colors and the scheme look very similar to last year's, though.

-BYU, mentioned above, was one of the first schools with what I would call "traditional uniforms" to make a complete overhaul. Well, I'm happy to report that they'll go back to the old Royal Blue and White uniforms worn by Ty Detmer, Robbie Bosco and Steve Young but not by Luke Staley and Brandon Doman. Whenever our kids look at the highlights of that magical 2001 season that ended in humiliation in Honolulu and Memphis, they'll ask "Daddy--were those some sort of futurisitic throw-ahead uniform as part of a promotion?" No son, those were just the ugliest uniforms (outside of Eugene, Oregon) that we tolerated during the early 2000s.

-Cincinatti's helmet will change ever so slightly. It appears that the graphic designer in charge of brainstorming toward something fresh came up with the remarkable idea of highlighting the old logo on his computer and pressing CTRL-I....and magic! A new, italicized, Bearcat logo. The licensing money will be rolling in, even if Gino Guidugli isn't coming back for his 9th year on campus.

-In a move no one but insomniacs will notice, Hawaii has switched from Green to Silver helmets as they try to incorporate silver--apparently they were told that "the rainbow" doesn't count as a secondary color.


In honor of the changes, a few lists.

Top 5 "Traditional" Uniforms (even if they have been tweaked):

1. UCLA
2. Nebraska
3. Notre Dame
4. Penn St.
5. Michigan

Top 5 "Non-Traditional" Uniforms (not that these schools don't have tradition, but these uniforms don't go back 50 years).

1. Virginia
2. Colorado St.
3. San Diego St.
4. Utah St.
5. UCONN


Worst Uniforms in the game:

1. Oregon
2. Rutgers
3. Maryland
4. Vanderbilt
5. Kansas St.

Scanning the Preseason Rankings

Its a good time to take survey the consenus as to which teams are coming into the season with high expectations if for no other reason than to ensure the ability to claim that certain teams have been "overrated by the pundits".

Right now, you've got a lot of "post-spring" rankings from the internet heavyweights. Within the next few weeks, the preview magazines will hit the stands, and we'll get a lot more in-depth with the preseason rankings.


Ivan Maisel and Pat Forde from ESPN.com
Stewart Mandel from SI
Dennis Dodd from CBS Sportsline
CFN.com


Rankings that might surprise you:
Pitt (17-Dodd, 21-Mandel)
Wyoming (22-Maisel, 25-Mandel & Forde)
Iowa St. (24-Forde)
Nebraska (16-Mandel)
Colorado (24-Dodd)
Arizona St. (11-CFN)

Combined Top 10
1. USC (50)
2. Texas (38)
3. Tennessee (33)
3. Iowa (33)
5. Ohio St. (24)
6. Virginia Tech (21)
7. Florida (20)
7. Michigan (20)
9. Oklahoma (12)
10. Miami (11)

Others: LSU (7), Auburn (4), Louisville (2)

ABC Posts Initial Schedule

ABC has now put out a very initial list of their televised games--kicking off the season with split prime time coverage including Pitt/Notre Dame and Clemson/aTm.

A good sign....

TV Schedules are starting to come out. ESPN/ESPN2 released their preliminary listings the other day.

You have to like Arizona and Desert Swarm II along with a mystifyingly strong recruiting class going into face the new, simplified Utah on the Friday night before the first Saturday of the season.

This list is always great because it gives you those novelty non-Saturday games. There's nothing better than coming home from work on a Wednesday or Thursday night, and then remembering that there's a surprisingly good college game on. While there has been a lot of acrimony about teams moving some of the focus away from Saturday, I'm all for the occasional Thursday or even Wednesday/Tuesday game. Here are my 5 favorite for the year, so far.

1. Florida St. at Miami, Monday Sept. 5, (ABC)
2. Arizona at Utah, Friday, Sept. 3, (ESPN)
3. Bowling Green at Boise St., Wed. Sept 21, (ESPN2)
4. Virginia Tech at Maryland, Thursday, Oct. 13 (ESPN)
5. Pitt at Louisville, Thursday, Nov. 3 (ESPN)

Kicking it off

We're less than four months out from the kickoff of Oregon and Houston at Reliant Stadium on what will be a glorious night in early September, so its time to start building that ugly, unnecessary chunk of our brain mass that is college football knowledge.

I was inspired to start this blog after frequenting Ken Pomeroy's college hoops blog "Hoops by the Numbers" . Ken did a fantastic job and I exchanged a few emails with him, and I'm hoping to follow his mold for college football (although there's no way I can be as numbers-saavy as he is).

Anyway, feel free to share the link, hopefully it'll be a pass some time as we rip pages off the calendar till September.