Grad rates for teams in New Year's Eve bowls ...

Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of the teams playing in New Year's Eve bowl games. Draw your own conclusions. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Meineke Car Care Bowl --

GSRs:  Texas A&M, 59; Northwestern, 94

Hyundai Sun Bowl –

GSRs:  Georgia Tech, 55; Utah, 62

Autozone Liberty Bowl –

GSRs:  Cincinnati, 79; Vanderbilt, 86

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl –

GSRs:  Illinois, 76; UCLA, 59

Chick-fil-A Bowl –

GSRs:  Virginia, 68; Auburn, 63

Grad rates for teams in Friday's bowl games ...

Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of the teams playing in Friday's bowl games. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl –

GSRs:  BYU, 57; Tulsa, 63

New Era Pinstripe Bowl –

GSRs:  Rutgers, 89; Iowa State, 63

Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl –

GSRs:  Mississippi State, 62; Wake Forest, 81

Insight Bowl –

GSRs:  Oklahoma, 48; Iowa, 83

Another NCAA reform now in limbo ...

Uh-oh. For the second time in that number of weeks, enough NCAA schools have objected to an NCAA reform measure to throw it into limbo. This time, it's a provision adopted in October to allow multi-year Division I  football scholarships rather than the one-year renewable schollies now in place. Because at least 75 schools objected to the rule within 60 days, it will be reconsidered by the NCAA's Division I Board of Governors when it convenes in mid-January 2012.

Earlier this month, the NCAA suspended another new reform measure that would have allowed schools to provide an additional $2,000 stipend -- called a "miscellaneous expense allowance" -- to help some scholarship athletes pay for incidental costs they incur as college students (as noted in previous posts on this blog). It, too, will be reconsidered at the January Board of Governors meeting.

Both measures were initially adopted after NCAA President Mark Emmert called a retreat for college presidents to discuss ways to improve NCAA athletics. Notably, both of these measures are directed at improving conditions for NCAA student-athletes, whose welfare has not been much of a priority for the NCAA in the past.

Kudos to Emmert for pushing these and other proposals aimed at improving the lives of student-athletes. But after such wide and quick dissent among the NCAA member institutions, you have to wonder how much longer they will put up with him and his reform mindset. After all, they hired him and could fire him. Firing him would seem to be a tragedy, perhaps still another indication -- exemplified in the extreme by the very sad events over the past decade or so at Penn State -- that the institution of college football outweighs the welfare of the most-vulnerable and most-expendable people involved with it.

Grad rates for Alamo Bowl and Sports Bowl teams ...

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Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of today's bowl teams. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Champion Sports Bowl --
GSRs: Florida State, 56; Notre Dame, 97

Valero Alamo Bowl --
GSRs: Washington, 76; Baylor, 62

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Grad rates for Holiday Bowl and Military Bowl teams ...

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Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of today's bowl teams. There's quite a variety! (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Military Bowl --
GSRs: Toledo, 64; Air Force, 84

Bridgeport Education Holiday Bowl --
GSRs: Texas, 57; California, 54

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

GSR rates for teams in today's bowls ...

Up front, I'll give readers a warm welcome and ask for a show of support  for the Beyond Friday Nights blog by clicking on some of the ads on display on the right side of the blog's pages. Now on to other things ... 

Check out the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for all of today's bowl teams. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

Little Caesar's Bowl --
GSRs: Purdue, 59; Western Michigan, 61

Belk Bowl --
GSRs: North Carolina State, 56; Louisville, 66

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Graduation rates for Independence Bowl teams ...

NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for both of tonight's bowl teams are not too bad, especially for one of the teams (See my previous posts on this grad rate issue, too.)

AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl --
GSRs:  Missouri, 66; North Carolina, 75
A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Grad rates for tonight's Hawaii Bowl teams ...

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NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for both of tonight's bowl teams are pretty high compared to those of many other teams that will play in more prestigious bowls later in the bowl season. (See my previous posts on this grad rate issue, too.)

Sheraton Hawaii Bowl --
GSRs: Nevada, 70; Southern Mississippi, 78

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Grad rates high for Maaco Bowl teams ...

For the second bowl game in a row, the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for both of tonight's bowl teams are fairly high, at least compared to those of many other football teams. Wonder if this will all change when we get into the more-prestigious bowl games. (See my previous posts on this grad rate issue, too.)

Maaco Bowl --
GSRs: Boise State, 74; Arizona State, 73

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Grad rates high for tonight's bowl teams ...

Compared to those of many other college football teams, the NCAA graduation rates (officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR) for both of tonight's bowl teams are fairly high. (See my previous posts on this issue, too.)

San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl --
   GSRs: TCU, 78; Louisiana Tech, 75

A few things to keep in mind: The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Graduation rates for football bowl teams ...

A couple of months ago, the NCAA released updated graduation rates for college football players, and I provided those figures for schools in the BCS rankings in a November 6 post. Now that bowl games are underway, I thought it would be interesting to provide the graduation rate -- officially known as the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR -- for each school in each bowl match-up. I'm starting a little late on this, because some bowl games have already been played, so I've added GSRs for those teams too. Check back, too -- I'll post the GSRs for teams that play in each day's bowl games.

Tonight's game (December 20)

Beef  O' Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl --
GSRs: Florida International 43, Marshall 77

Games already played (December 17)

Gildan New Mexico Bowl --
GSRs: Temple 60, Wyoming 64
  (Game result: Temple 37, Wyoming 15)

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl --
GSRs:  Ohio 71, Utah State 77
  (Game result:  Ohio 24, Utah State 23)

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl --
GSRs San Diego State 56, Louisiana-Lafayette 56
  (Game result: San Diego State 30, Louisiana-Lafayette 32

A few things to keep in mind:  The NCAA's GSR measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

The $2,000 stipend suspended, for now ...

Remember that new NCAA provision adopted in November that would allow Division I athletic conferences to allow their institutions to give an additional $2,000 to some scholarship athletes to cover some of their incidental college expenses? Well, not so fast. After 125 schools by December 15 had requested an override of the new rule, the NCAA decided to suspend it at least until the NCAA Board of Governors meets in mid-January, when changes could be made in it. In general, the schools requested the override based on one or more of these factors -- the speed at which the new rule came about, concerns about its effect on fair competition, concerns about implementation in all sports, and concerns about the effect on activities related to Title IX (the 1972 federal law prohibiting any form of gender-based discrimination in any educational activity -- including athletics -- at institutions receiving federal funds).

Football recruiting "dead" period approaches ...

The college football recruiting process requires college coaches to follow certain rules and regulations designating when and how they can contact potential recruits. For example, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Division I football recruiting calendar establishes a "dead" period beginning December 19, 2011 and continuing through January 3, 2012. During this period, "a college coach may not have any in-person contact" with a prospective recruit or his parents on or off campus at any time, according to the NCAA. However, "the coach may write and telephone" a prospective recruit or his parents during this period.

Sorting out the NCAA's "dead" period for recruiting, as well as other designated periods for evaluating players and contacting players, can be confusing. Although complying with these recruiting rules and regulations is primarily the concern of the coaches who are doing the recruiting, potential recruits and their parents might want to be aware of them so that they know when coaches can or can't make contact -- and just how they can make contact -- on certain dates.

Fortunately, the NCAA makes available online definitions for each of these types of recruiting periods, as well as a Division I football recruiting calendar and a Division II football recruiting calendar.

Much more information about the college football recruiting process is available in the book Beyond Friday Nights: College Football Recruiting for Players and Parents. 

The Redshirt, Greenshirt, and Grayshirt ...

High school football players interested in playing college football might be confronted with the words "redshirt," "grayshirt," and "greenshirt." These terms refer to player recruiting and player development strategies used by many colleges in recruiting for football.

NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) rules allow a college football player five years to complete his four seasons of eligibility. That fifth year in which the player doesn't compete on the field, although he practices and receives his scholarship just as any other player on a football scholarship, is called the redshirt year. Usually, new recruits are redshirted their freshman year because they tend to need more time to develop as college players who can contribute to the success of the team. A freshman player who plays in games during his first year on campus (he isn't redshirted) will have only three additional years to play, but a freshman who doesn't play in games during his first year in college (he's redshirted) will still have four more years of playing eligibility after that first year.

A high school player receives a greenshirt or is "greenshirted" when he graduates early from high school, foregoing his spring semester there so that he can enroll in college during that spring semester. Almost unheard of until recent years, the greenshirt allows high school players to participate in spring practice with his college team, develop his football skills and understanding of the team's system during the spring and summer, and possibly begin playing in games the following fall. This system gives a player and the college team an early start on preparing to play football in college, but comes at the cost of leaving high school early, which might or might not be the best long-term strategy for a student.

A player gets a grayshirt or is "grayshirted" when he signs a letter of intent on signing day in February, but doesn't enter college full-time until the following spring instead of the following fall. He doesn't receive a scholarship, practice with the team, or take a full-time load of college courses until his spring enrollment. Grayshirting a player allows a college to sign a player, but delay his play in games for another year. In effect, grayshirting gives a player another year of practice before play, since the NCAA-mandated five-year eligibility period doesn't begin until a student is enrolled full-time. College programs that have already awarded near the maximum number of scholarships allowed under NCAA rules are forced to sign a small recruiting class, and they are the most interested in players who are willing to grayshirt.

Football recruiting tip: the full-game high school video

A highlight tape -- showing a high school football player's most dominating performances during one of his high school games -- is a good way to show college football coaches what a potential football recruit can do on the field. Whether posted on YouTube, with the link sent to those college coaches, or burned to a DVD that is mailed to them, or made available some through another method, it can be a good way to get their interest. But if college coaches become really interested in a high school player, they'll soon want a video showing one of his entire ghigh school football games. Think of it this way – if your highlight video has 25 of your best plays, that suggests that you played really well in only about two or three plays per game. So sooner or later, college coaches will want to see how you played during an entire game, and a full-game video is the only way for them to do that. Of course, if you want to play only as a punter or a kicker in college, or perhaps only as a deep snapper, punt returner, or kick returner, you could get by with a video showing every punt or kick in which you participated. But for players at every other position, video of entire game is something that college coaches will want to evaluate before offering a scholarship.

Football recruiting tip: study team rosters

If you’re not one of the few top high school football players in the nation at your position, do you still have a chance to become part of a college football team? Of course you do. You simply have do a little more to sort out which college football programs might be interested in you, and you probably have to work a little harder to grab a college coach’s attention. Here's one tip:

Study the rosters of college football teams to identify their needs for players at your position. On their official websites, almost all college football programs post a list of every member of their team. Usually, additional information – such as position, height, and weight, and classification (freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior) for each player – are provided as well.  So with a little study, it's easy to figure out how many players they have at each position and how many of them are juniors and seniors. If most of them are such upperclassmen, there’s a better chance that they’ll be looking for new recruits at those positions. Any high school football player who sees such a potential opening should send the college's head coach or recruiting coordinator a letter (look for addresses on the football program's website) providing contact information; height, weight, and speed; awards or other recognition received; and other relevant information.

The Penn State outrage ...

After reading the grand jury report enumerating and describing the sordid details of former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky's alleged sexual assault of young boys, it's difficult to believe that anyone with knowledge of Sandusky's not-so-secret behavior -- much less than people with near-ultimate authority, such as now-former head coach Joe Paterno and Penn State President Graham Spanier -- would allow any possibility of it continuing. But that's what appears to have happened.

Several points come to mind:

• This did not involve only a single incident, or even a couple of incidents. It was many incidents, involving many boys, over many years -- more than a decade. For Joe "I wish I had done more" Paterno and other coaches and administrators at Penn State to cover up this long history of criminal behavior is incomprehensible -- and scary for the rest of us who realize what control and power these coaches and administrators have over college students, even if those students are much less vulnerable than the boys who were molested and assaulted.
• Clearly, coaches' and adminstrators' loyalty to Penn State football and Joe Paterno took precedence over protecting young, defenseless, vulnerable boys from a predator. In short, this was loyalty run amok. And there's a lesson in that for all of us, who sometimes believe in people and institutions without question ... voluntarily waiving our ability to clearly judge what is right and what is wrong. 
• In the end, the cover-up conducted by Paterno and other coaches and administrators caused precisely what they wanted to prevent -- damage to the good name and reputation of Penn State University and its football program. As the author of a book on college football recruiting, I've been asked how this might affect the football program's recruiting efforts (an issue which pales beside others, such as the effect on the children who were so violently abused by Sandusky). In response, I can say that if I was the parent of a football player being recruited by Penn State, I would go out of my way to prevent my son from joining that team until every one of Paterno's assistant coaches, and probably many of the football programs administrative staff, left the program. I would not want my son put into the hands of anyone whose loyalty to Paterno and Penn State football was so extreme that they could not or would not, over more than a decade, prevent one of their own from inflicting such serious harm on defenseless and vulnerable young people.

Football recruiting letters ... what they mean and don't mean

Receiving a letter from a nationally ranked college football program -- or almost any college football program, for that matter -- is good news that's tremendously exciting to players and their families. But those players and families should also understand what those recruiting letters are -- and what they are not.

Recruiting materials from college programs are usually form letters expressing the college's interest in the high school player. Questionnaires are usually included too. High school football athletes who hope to play football in college should always complete and return those questionnaires to ensure that college football coaches have as much information -- especially vitally important contact information -- as possible. Without that, college coaches won't have a needed starting point for taking a further look at a player and evaluate him.

If a player gets letters from a college, that's certainly a sure sign that he's of some interest, probably because he is performing well as a high school player, or has the size, weight, strength or speed to get that attention. But at least hundreds, and probably thousands, of other high school football players are also receiving those letters from that same college.

By itself, getting a form letter means simply that a player is on a college football program's mailing list. It doesn't mean that the player is being recruited, but only that the college probably wants to evaluate him to determine if he should be recruited to meet that team's needs. Hopefully, a college's interest in a player increases as he performs well throughout the season, and communications will become more personal, through telephone calls and electronic messages.

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The $2,000 stipend for scholarship athletes ...

Now the NCAA will allow college football conferences to allow – if they want – their schools to give athletes on full scholarships an additional stipend of up to $2,000 per year. The need for this additional money is understandable. After all, despite its value to players, even a full-ride scholarship doesn’t provide money for gas … for an occasional pizza … for a movie.  And even if scholarship athletes could get legitimate jobs, the time demands of their commitment to the team don’t come close to allowing that. There are practices, meetings, workouts … even the so-called “voluntary” workouts during the summer … that effectively turn many college athletes, and especially those at Division I schools, into de facto full-time employees of the institution, even if that makes these student-athletes’ educations a secondary consideration (an issue for another day here). So based on the need to help these full-ride scholarship players cope with legitimate, additional financial needs, NCAA president Mark Emmert makes a good case, as noted in a great question-and-answer exchange in the Houston Chronicle. But part of what he says – that this will not widen the gap between the football programs with great resources and the football programs with not-so-great resources – is a bit of a stretch. Although we’re all familiar with media reports of how much revenue football programs bring in,  that's the exception rather than the rule. The fact is that most don’t make money. In fact, between 2004 and 2010, only 7 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision (Division I-A) made money, according to an NCAA report.  UPDATE: As of December 15, the rule was suspended, pending a meeting of the NCAA board of Governors in mid-January,2012.

Player "fit" varies among colleges ...

Probably most high school football players who hope to play in college begin looking at specific schools -- Texas, Ohio State, USC, Alabama, for example. But they would be wise to focus instead on their own skills, speed, height, and weight, and then figure out which schools are most likely to need what they bring to the table, based on how well their own characteristics match the needs of different schools. Sometimes entire conferences are geared toward a certain type of player, as noted in Kevin Lyttle's insightful article in the Austin American-Statesman. Although teams in the Big 12 and the SEC are among the best in the nation this year, making those conferences also the best, the style of play in each of those conferences tends to be vastly different -- ensuring that teams in each conference look for similarly different types of players. Potential recruits should take note.

NCAA updates football graduation rates ...

Annually updated graduation rates for college football players were released a few days ago by the NCAA, and the range among Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) programs is, well, extensive. Officially called the Graduation Success Rate, or GSR, the NCAA's measure looks at the percentage of players who earned a degree within six years of entering college. The latest data is for those who entered college in 2004, so it's a somewhat dated measure, reflecting how well those students performed academically -- as measure solely by whether they earned degrees or not -- over the past six years. So if a particular college program decided this year to improve the academic success of its players, we wouldn't see results, as measured this way, until six years later. Of course, the opposite of that is true too -- if a program began dropping the ball, so to speak, on working hard to ensure that their players earned degrees, we wouldn't know about it for many years. It's important to note, too, that the GSR calculation doesn't penalize schools for students who, while in good academic standing, leave the program, perhaps to transfer to another school or maybe even go to the NFL before earning their degree. The NCAA makes GSR data available by school and by conference in a searchable database. And see a rather rosy-sounding NCAA news release, too, covering GSRs for all sports.

Just for grins, I've taken a look at the latest GSRs for the schools in the latest BCS standings. Interesting stuff. Draw your own conclusions:

1.  LSU – 77 percent

2.  Alabama -- 69
3.  Oklahoma State -- 65
4.  Boise State-- 74
5.  Clemson -- 62
6.  Stanford -- 87
7.  Oregon -- 63
8.  Kansas State -- 62
9.  Oklahoma -- 48
10. Arkansas -- 56
11. Michigan State --62
12. Virginia Tech -- 79
13. South Carolina -- 39
14. Nebraska -- 67
15. Wisconsin -- 66
16. Texas A&M -- 59
17. Houston -- 57
18. Michigan -- 71
19. Penn State -- 87
20. Texas Tech -- 68
21. Arizona State -- 64
22. Georgia -- 65
23. Auburn -- 63
24. Texas -- 57
25. West Virginia -- 75

Coach turnover rate surprisingly high ...

At top-level (Division I) college football programs, chances are only about 50-50 that a player's head coach as a freshman will be his head coach when he is a senior. So it's a good idea for high school football recruits to base their commitment decisions on more than how they like those coaches personally. Recruits should also consider whether the college itself is a good fit for them academically, socially, and geographically.

Looking at the numbers, head coach turnover averaged nearly 19 percent annually over the past three years (2009-2011) at Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) programs, according to NCAA statistics. And head coach turnover averaged more than 13 percent annually over the last three years at Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) programs. No data is available for lower-division programs.

So taken together, this data indicates that there were head coaching changes at nearly one-half of NCAA Division I football programs over the most recent three-year period (2009-2011). And that doesn't take into account other coaching changes among offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, and other assistant coaches. Many of them leave and join college football coaching staffs every year, even if the head coach remains the same at a given program.

Assistant coaches are often the primary points of contact for college players, so a player's college football experience can be greatly affected when those assistants leave and new ones arrive -- another great reason for taking into account other factors, such as academics, social issues, and location -- when recruits try to determine where to play college football.

Coaching changes often begin in late November and December, soon after the end of a football season in which a college team might fail to meet the expectations of fans, alumni, and other supporters.

Texas regulates two-a-day football practices ...

In a big step toward improving player safety, Texas is outlawing two-a-day sessions during the first four days of late-summer high school football practices, limiting two-a-days to every other day, and requiring at least a two-hour break between two-a-days on days when they are allowed. This is a big, welcome step for football-crazy Texas, where late-summer temperatures frequently exceed triple digits. Wonder if this move will influence other states to take similar action if they haven't already done so. Didier Morais writes a good summary piece in the Houston Chronicle and Rick Cantu offers some excellent commentary in the Austin American-Statesman.

An "unofficial" visit to a college football game ...

During the college football season, an unofficial visit to a college or university on game day is a good way to for a prospective recruit to get a good sense of the football culture at that school. The recruit is responsible for transportation, food, and other expenses, except that a college can give him -- free of charge -- a maximum of three tickets to an on-campus athletic event, and many are quick to offer them to potential recruits on request. During a gameday unofficial visit, visiting high school players will do things like hang out at a lounge for the football team, see some of the program’s facilities (perhaps the locker room and weight room), perhaps see highlight video from the team’s past, hear a few brief words from a top coach or athletic department official, have the opportunity to buy a meal there (usually nothing particularly memorable), perhaps meet some coaches, perhaps meet some attractive young female students who can help them find their way around, take a stroll along the sidelines during pre-game warm-ups, and get some good seats – with other recruits and their parents or other guests – during the game. Prospective recruits can make as many of these visits as they wish, and those who take the opportunity to visit several different colleges and universities can get some good information for comparing them.

Academics are vital ...

As the school year begins, any high school football player who hopes to play in college must understand the need for making the best grades possible.