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Plus my user page looked goofy without one, so I decided to make a news post, enjoy...

Targeting the top 10
By Terry Bowden, Yahoo! Sports
November 16, 2007

Terry Bowden
Yahoo! Sports
Have you ever tried to figure out what it takes to get into the top 10 in college football? I mean, we all want to win the national championship, but if you're not in the top 10, you are not even in the hunt. Teams don't just get lucky and win 10 or 11 games in a year. There's a reason for their success. We spend so much time trying to determine who the best teams are that we never take the time to understand how it is they got there in the first place.

The easy answer is that you just need to have the best athletes. That would be great if we all had the same access. The fact is, only a few schools in the country have the ability to recruit the very best football players. In the current top 10, I would say LSU, Oklahoma, Ohio State and maybe Georgia are the only schools that have a chance to get the best players in the country. Therefore, for most of the teams in the country, if you want to find yourself in the top 10, you better find a way to out-coach or, at least, out-prepare your opponents, because you are not going to be able to "out-athlete" them.

As a 15-year college head coach, I am much more concerned with the process than the results. With the advent of the 20-hour rule in college football about 15 years ago, there are only so many hours in a week we can prepare for a game. Therefore what time we spend working on one phase of the game takes away from the time we spend on another phase of the game. For example, we may all want to have a great running game, but if we spend too much time on that, we won't have a good passing game. We all want to be good at punt and kickoff returns, but if we focus too much on that we won't spend enough time on punt protection. Somewhere along the line, we have to prioritize what exactly are the most important things we must be good at if we are going to get into the top 10 and if we are going to have a chance to play for a national championship.

That's why I like to do an in-depth study of just what it is that the top 10 teams all do well. I also like to see what the top 10 teams do not so well but still win. If eight of the top-10 teams in the country are very good at stopping the run, but only OK in stopping the pass, then I better spend more time at stopping the run. If only one of the top-10 teams are any good on punt returns, I don't know how much time each week I'm going to work on punt returns.

I have developed a chart to help myself analyze the statistics of the top-10 teams to see what categories of statistics are most important in having a successful season. There are all kinds of statistics that can be evaluated, but I have chosen 10 categories that I believe to be most important. Then, for each category, I have included the statistical total and the national rank.

For example, LSU is ranked No.1 in total defense averaging 236.8 yards per game. On the other hand, Missouri is ranked No. 57 in total defense giving up 377.7 yards per game. However, if you look at all 10 of the top teams, eight are ranked in the top 10 in total defense. Although this is a fairly obvious observation, you better play great defense if you are going to be a top-10 caliber team. More importantly, especially in where you place your best athletes and allocate the most practice time, it looks like having a great defense is more important than having a great offense.

Below is a condensed copy of my personal study chart when it comes to evaluating top-10 teams.

Some interesting tidbits:

%u2022 The most important statistics in football are total/scoring offense, total/scoring defense, turnover margin and passing efficiency. 70 percent of the top-10 teams are ranked in the top 25 in these categories. Everyone knows how important it is to score a lot of points and to keep the opponent from scoring, but it is interesting to see that turnovers are just as important.

%u2022 Only one top-10 team is ranked in the top 10 in passing offense and only two are in the top 25, whereas, five teams are ranked in the top five in rushing offense. More importantly, seven of the top-10 teams are ranked in the top 25 in total offense, which clearly shows that a balanced offense is the best way to win.

%u2022 The top five teams are ranked in the top 25 on both sides of the ball except for Oregon, which gave up 34 points Thursday night to Arizona and lost.

%u2022 Eighth-ranked Georgia is not ranked in the top 10 in any statistical category and in the top 25 in only one - they are 25th in total defense. That might be why coach Mark Richt is pulling out all the stops with celebration penalties and black jerseys to have his team playing so well.

%u2022 Kansas is ranked in the top 25 in all 10 statistical categories and in the top 10 in six statistical categories. The Jayhawks are the only team in college football's top division with this distinction. They are No. 1 or No. 2 in scoring offense, scoring defense, and turnover margin ... and they are the No. 1 ranked team in kickoff returns and fewest penalties. Folks, there is a whole lot of coaching going on in Lawrence, Kansas.

%u2022 Be sure to go over all the teams' schedules for such things as lower-division opponents and blowouts when evaluating these statistics to make sure there are not any games that skew the results.

%u2022 And finally, you can go to the NCAA statistical website and make your own observations.

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