Daily Blog •July 30, 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 AAC, Mountain West, CUSA, Independents, MAC and Sun Belt 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. 30 of the 62 teams were above the 60% underclassmen barrier while only six teams (9.7%) have more upperclassmen than underclassmen on their roster.

# of Seniors, Juniors, Sophomores,
Freshman Per Roster

School SR JR SO FR Total Upper Lower Upper % Lower %
Colorado St 16 20 37 59 132 36 96 27.27% 72.73%
Massachusetts 13 13 28 36 90 26 64 28.89% 71.11%
SMU 16 16 29 45 106 32 74 30.19% 69.81%
Connecticut 13 18 23 47 101 31 70 30.69% 69.31%
Miami, Oh 12 16 23 40 91 28 63 30.77% 69.23%
FIU 16 15 26 40 97 31 66 31.96% 68.04%
Ball St 13 22 28 45 108 35 73 32.41% 67.59%
Tulsa 17 22 25 56 120 39 81 32.50% 67.50%
Tulane 22 14 27 45 108 36 72 33.33% 66.67%
Kent St 18 15 20 41 94 33 61 35.11% 64.89%
Rutgers 19 20 19 53 111 39 72 35.14% 64.86%
Temple 22 14 27 39 102 36 66 35.29% 64.71%
Old Dominion 11 22 17 42 92 33 59 35.87% 64.13%
Western Michigan 22 15 26 39 102 37 65 36.27% 63.73%
Ohio 22 19 28 44 113 41 72 36.28% 63.72%
Navy 22 37 51 52 162 59 103 36.42% 63.58%
UCF 10 24 18 41 93 34 59 36.56% 63.44%
Southern Miss 22 20 29 43 114 42 72 36.84% 63.16%
Bowling Green 17 23 19 49 108 40 68 37.04% 62.96%
Central Michigan 18 21 27 38 104 39 65 37.50% 62.50%
Boise St 16 21 17 43 97 37 60 38.14% 61.86%
Eastern Michigan 14 23 22 38 97 37 60 38.14% 61.86%
San Diego St 19 24 26 43 112 43 69 38.39% 61.61%
Toledo 16 24 17 47 104 40 64 38.46% 61.54%
ULM 17 17 19 35 88 34 54 38.64% 61.36%
UAB 19 17 29 28 93 36 57 38.71% 61.29%
Wyoming 12 26 19 41 98 38 60 38.78% 61.22%
New Mexico 17 24 32 32 105 41 64 39.05% 60.95%
Memphis 18 26 21 47 112 44 68 39.29% 60.71%
Rice 21 20 26 36 103 41 62 39.81% 60.19%
Northern Illinois 18 29 19 51 117 47 70 40.17% 59.83%
Arkansas St 20 24 21 44 109 44 65 40.37% 59.63%
Houston 14 24 23 32 93 38 55 40.86% 59.14%
East Carolina 23 24 26 42 115 47 68 40.87% 59.13%
BYU 24 28 30 45 127 52 75 40.94% 59.06%
Army 27 35 40 47 149 62 87 41.61% 58.39%
Middle Tennessee 22 24 22 41 109 46 63 42.20% 57.80%
USF 20 27 31 33 111 47 64 42.34% 57.66%
Cincinnati 18 26 25 33 102 44 58 43.14% 56.86%
San Jose St 22 22 18 40 102 44 58 43.14% 56.86%
Louisiana 15 27 19 36 97 42 55 43.30% 56.70%
Western Kentucky 27 25 32 36 120 52 68 43.33% 56.67%
Louisville 18 31 27 36 112 49 63 43.75% 56.25%
Akron 22 26 25 36 109 48 61 44.04% 55.96%
Buffalo 20 23 22 32 97 43 54 44.33% 55.67%
Nevada 13 30 17 37 97 43 54 44.33% 55.67%
Marshall 20 27 27 30 104 47 57 45.19% 54.81%
Troy 24 27 21 38 110 51 59 46.36% 53.64%
UNLV 18 26 17 33 94 44 50 46.81% 53.19%
Florida Atlantic 27 23 23 33 106 50 56 47.17% 52.83%
Idaho 20 21 12 33 86 41 45 47.67% 52.33%
UTEP 18 32 19 35 104 50 54 48.08% 51.92%
Utah St 22 31 17 37 107 53 54 49.53% 50.47%
Fresno St 18 26 21 23 88 44 44 50.00% 50.00%
Hawaii 23 32 22 33 110 55 55 50.00% 50.00%
North Texas 21 33 21 33 108 54 54 50.00% 50.00%
Texas St 32 34 30 33 129 66 63 51.16% 48.84%
UTSA 10 43 18 30 101 53 48 52.48% 47.52%
Georgia St 28 29 16 33 106 57 49 53.77% 46.23%
Louisiana Tech 22 32 20 25 99 54 45 54.55% 45.45%
New Mexico St 32 17 18 22 89 49 40 55.06% 44.94%
South Alabama 29 41 15 31 116 70 46 60.34% 39.66%

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