Daily Blog •July 29, 2013

I have developed several pet peeves after covering college football for nearly three decades. Three of them concern coach speak. The first is when a new HC or a new OC or new DC is hired you always hear them say in the press conference that they are going to have a more attacking style on both sides of the ball. You never hear a HC say that the team is going to be more laid back, play more soft coverage, ease up on offense.

The 2nd coach speak comes on Signing Day. I don’t think I have ever heard a coach say that “this year we really missed the boat on several recruits and we have a disappointing class coming in.” I always hear “I really like my class” and “we addressed a lot of needs.”

My final coach speak is when I hear a coach say that we are young and inexperienced and have more underclassmen than upperclassmen. This bothers me for a couple of reasons. First, when you consider that most freshman end up red-shirting their freshman seasons, it is almost like having another class when you add them to the true incoming freshman class. This means you basically have five classes on a football roster (true frosh, rFr, Soph, Jr, Sr) and that means roughly 60% of your roster should be filled with underclassmen. Second, usually on signing day teams sign anywhere between 20-25 recruits on avg but after three years of injuries, transfers, early entries to the NFL draft, that class is usually down at least 5-10 players which means your senior class is smaller than your freshman class.

Today’s blog I decided to take the official rosters from the major BCS teams and add up the total number of Seniors (incl 5th yr), Juniors, Sophomores and Freshman (including true and redshirts) to see if indeed there are far more underclassmen on a roster than upperclassmen.

Below is a chart of every team and naturally those numbers could be in flux due to transfers, suspensions, etc but I do think you get a reasonably accurate look at the number for each class and each team.

As you can see 60% of the rosters like I originally thought are filled with underclassmen. 34 of the 63 teams were above the 60% underclassmen barrier while only two teams (3.2%) have more upperclassmen than underclassmen on their roster. South Carolina, surprisingly tops the list as the Gamecocks have only four seniors on their roster!

# of Seniors, Juniors, Sophomores,
Freshman Per Roster

School SR JR SO FR Total Upper Lower Upper % Lower %
South Carolina 4 26 31 43 104 30 74 28.85% 71.15%
Wake Forest 15 16 20 52 103 31 72 30.10% 69.90%
Northwestern 13 20 23 53 109 33 76 30.28% 69.72%
Michigan 16 17 23 52 108 33 75 30.56% 69.44%
Iowa 16 22 25 61 124 38 86 30.65% 69.35%
Illinois 15 22 32 45 114 37 77 32.46% 67.54%
Penn St 12 17 22 37 88 29 59 32.95% 67.05%
Nebraska 23 23 24 68 138 46 92 33.33% 66.67%
LSU 13 28 31 48 120 41 79 34.17% 65.83%
Texas A&M 14 24 28 44 110 38 72 34.55% 65.45%
UCLA 27 17 33 50 127 44 83 34.65% 65.35%
Iowa St 19 23 21 58 121 42 79 34.71% 65.29%
Maryland 13 21 28 34 96 34 62 35.42% 64.58%
Virginia Tech 13 29 23 53 118 42 76 35.59% 64.41%
Michigan St 18 21 29 41 109 39 70 35.78% 64.22%
Baylor 24 14 23 45 106 38 68 35.85% 64.15%
Virginia 9 29 23 45 106 38 68 35.85% 64.15%
North Carolina 13 28 38 34 113 41 72 36.28% 63.72%
Stanford 14 26 34 36 110 40 70 36.36% 63.64%
Oregon St 18 19 22 42 101 37 64 36.63% 63.37%
West Virginia 14 25 27 40 106 39 67 36.79% 63.21%
Colorado 16 26 30 42 114 42 72 36.84% 63.16%
Arkansas 19 21 31 36 107 40 67 37.38% 62.62%
Ohio St 16 24 33 33 106 40 66 37.74% 62.26%
Vanderbilt 18 21 23 40 102 39 63 38.24% 61.76%
Minnesota 18 29 31 44 122 47 75 38.52% 61.48%
Kentucky 14 28 32 34 108 42 66 38.89% 61.11%
Florida 16 28 21 48 113 44 69 38.94% 61.06%
Utah 19 25 33 36 113 44 69 38.94% 61.06%
Georgia Tech 19 25 30 38 112 44 68 39.29% 60.71%
Washington 13 24 21 36 94 37 57 39.36% 60.64%
Arizona 18 21 23 37 99 39 60 39.39% 60.61%
Missouri 19 28 27 44 118 47 71 39.83% 60.17%
Mississippi St 13 27 20 40 100 40 60 40.00% 60.00%
Purdue 25 20 18 49 112 45 67 40.18% 59.82%
Indiana 12 34 26 42 114 46 68 40.35% 59.65%
Notre Dame 16 24 29 30 99 40 59 40.40% 59.60%
Duke 17 26 30 33 106 43 63 40.57% 59.43%
Wisconsin 22 26 26 43 117 48 69 41.03% 58.97%
TCU 18 30 37 31 116 48 68 41.38% 58.62%
Oklahoma 19 22 23 35 99 41 58 41.41% 58.59%
Washington St 19 22 22 36 99 41 58 41.41% 58.59%
NC State 19 27 22 42 110 46 64 41.82% 58.18%
Boston College 13 26 23 31 93 39 54 41.94% 58.06%
Pittsburgh 17 23 9 45 94 40 54 42.55% 57.45%
Oklahoma St 29 25 31 41 126 54 72 42.86% 57.14%
Arizona St 29 20 34 31 114 49 65 42.98% 57.02%
Auburn 16 31 24 38 109 47 62 43.12% 56.88%
Clemson 16 33 27 37 113 49 64 43.36% 56.64%
Georgia 26 30 28 45 129 56 73 43.41% 56.59%
Alabama 18 30 31 31 110 48 62 43.64% 56.36%
Florida St 19 36 28 43 126 55 71 43.65% 56.35%
Oregon 20 27 27 32 106 47 59 44.34% 55.66%
Kansas St 21 37 19 52 129 58 71 44.96% 55.04%
California 14 37 23 39 113 51 62 45.13% 54.87%
Texas Tech 19 26 22 32 99 45 54 45.45% 54.55%
Texas 20 35 25 40 120 55 65 45.83% 54.17%
Tennessee 25 27 21 40 113 52 61 46.02% 53.98%
Ole Miss 26 29 28 34 117 55 62 47.01% 52.99%
Miami, Fl 25 21 21 28 95 46 49 48.42% 51.58%
Syracuse 24 28 24 28 104 52 52 50.00% 50.00%
USC 24 23 27 18 92 47 45 51.09% 48.91%
Kansas 22 35 19 24 100 57 43 57.00% 43.00%

Tomorrow, I will break down the other five conferences and the remaining independents.

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