Daily Blog •June 30, 2011

My 2011 College Football Preview Magazine has so much information in it that it would take months to go thru it all. It is like 120 media guides rolled into one.

Magazine is a loose term for it as the Preview is more like a book with over 100 pages more than any other college football magazine. Not only does it have more pages but the magazine has 2 to 3 times the amount of information on each page! That gives my magazine 3 to 4 times the amount of information of any other magazine!

I mention all of this because there are even parts of the magazine that I myself forget about during the year. Every spring once I have finished my conference write ups, Top 40, All-American and All-Conference Teams I wrap up the “other” pages in the magazine. One of those pages that I find a lot of fun is the projected stats which is on page 324 and 327.

I have in-depth power ratings which rates each team’s rush offense, pass offense and points scored as well as all three categories for the defense. I have my computer match up each team vs all of their opponents and play the games out during the year. These projected statistics are not some random number I throw into the back of the magazine to fill up space (I never have ANYTHING in the magazine that is used for filler!). They take into account this year’s team vs this year’s schedule and they are remarkably accurate.

Let me give you a few examples from last year:

In 2009 Rice returned only 3 starters from a unit that avg’d 41.3 ppg in 2008 and the Owls went on to score a pedestrian 18.3 ppg. Last year they returned 9 starters and in my 2010 Preview I declared that they would have the Most Improved Offensive Points in the country and my computer predicted they would avg 28.6 ppg. Amazingly Rice would go on to score 28.7 ppg a 10.4 ppg improvement and my computer was just .1 PPG off!

On the defensive side Miami, Oh was my #2 Most Improved Defensive Points allowed team in the country as they returned 9 starters from a unit that allowed 34.2 ppg in 2009. My computer projected they would give up 28.0 ppg a 6.2 ppg improvement but even the RedHawks exceeded my expectations and allowed just 23.2 ppg a 11 ppg improvement last year!

I could go on and on with the examples because I find projecting statistics as fascinating as projecting wins and losses. If you check out pages 324 and 327 you will get my complete statistical projection for each team in both yards and points for the year.

Here are the Top 15 Offenses this year in “Most Improved Points Scored.”

Most Improved Offensive PPG
Rank Team
1 Colorado St
2 Penn St
3 West Virginia
4 Purdue
5 San Jose St
6 BYU
7 Texas
8 UCLA
9 Rutgers
10 Buffalo
11 Notre Dame
12 SMU
13 Clemson
14 Texas A&M
15 Memphis

Here are the Top 15 Defenses this year in "Most Improved Points Allowed.”

Most Improved Defensive PPG
Rank Team
1 San Jose St
2 Eastern Michigan
3 New Mexico
4 Michigan
5 Penn St
6 Cincinnati
7 East Carolina
8 UCLA
9 USC
10 Memphis
11 UNLV
12 Colorado St
13 Washington St
14 Louisiana
15 South Carolina

Only 62 DAYS LEFT UNTIL THE FIRST COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME!!