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And a ton of money started flowing circa 1980 into HS and preHS football programs as well.  The state was quite poor circa 1960, and education in general was generally very bad, or at least not well supported by tax monies.  I was in HS circa 1970 in what was supposed to be the top county system in the state and it was "so-so" I'd say.  We did have a new HS building (since replaced).  The facilities today of course are far better than what we had.  The football practice field was just dirt.  The track was cinders.  

The baseball field was pretty decent.

I think today a lot of kids get started young with decent coaching and facilities and the best athletes stay with football.

The state right underneath Georgia is one of the 5 oldest.  Hmm.

It's where old people go to die.

It also has a lot of top football recruits, but given that it is the third most populous state in the US, sheer population explains it. 

#116 Army Black Knights

Independent

f Army wasn’t “ARMY” (although a lot of vets I know actually hate the reverence given to the military academies’ football teams, but that’s another discussion), you would have seen them take a lot more heat last year.  Seen as a fringe Top 25 team last year, that was a September upset of Michigan away from being a real New Years Six contender, the Black Knights could not have fallen flatter on their face.  Early on, things seemed fine, they very nearly did pull that upset, taking the Wolverines to double overtime, and being otherwise undefeated entering October.  From there on out, Army lost 7 of their final 9 games, with the wins coming over 1-11 Massachusetts and FCS VMI.  It’s not like any of the losses were against particularly remarkable opponents either, with easily best being the season ending 31-7 drubbing at the hands of Navy, which put an end to Army’s three game winning streak in the series, the academy’s longest since winning 5 in a row from 1992-1996.  Teams focused on making sure quarterback Kelvin Hopkins Jr. wouldn’t beat them with his legs, and the offense just sort of crumbled around that.  He was nearly as effective when he did keep the ball as he had been in 2018, but on 70 fewer carries, and nobody else picked up the slack.  The result was a drop of nearly 50 rushing yards per game from 2018, and his passing was thus, much less effective as well, seeing a 12% drop in completion rate, and a nasty 3.5 ypa drop, while his interception rate more than doubled.  That said, he was a three year starter in the system that now needs to be replaced.  Hopkins’ backups are not exactly inexperienced, with both Jabari Laws and Christian Anderson seeing action in over half the games last year.  Laws is certainly the more intriguing of the two, getting into nine games, primarily as a running option.  He did complete 16 of 20 passes for 311 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions, while also running for 520 yards on 6.4 ypc, second best on the team.  Don’t be shocked to see whoever isn’t the starting quarterback gets plenty of action in a backfield that loses two of its three top ball carriers in a system that still ran the ball 83.1% of the time (third most in the FBS) even while struggling to a 5-8 season.  The defense looks to be in worse shape though, returning only two major contributors from a defense that began the season well enough, but faded down the stretch.  Perhaps no stat was a more telling contributor to the Black Knights’ trouble than their third down defense, which ranked 2nd in the FBS in 2018, and spiraled down to #117 last year.  While Army is generally not lacking for leadership, to be a two-time captain at West Point, says something about the hole that Cole Christiansen, who Phil Steele also named as a two-time All-Independent First team linebacker will leave behind.

	KEY PLAYERS
RB	Sandon McCoy, Senior
WR	Camden Harrison, Senior
C	J.B. Hunter, Senior
	.
DE	Edrice Patterson, Senior
LB	Arik Smith, Junior
P	Zach Harding, Junior

#115 Old Dominion Monarchs

#9 in Conference USA

Everything about the Old Dominion program build seemed to be lining up.  They are in a fertile recruiting area, by 2011, in Year 3 of the program, they were a Top 10 FCS team, rising to #3 in 2012.  They went .500 in their FBS debut in 2014, and by 2016, went 10-3, won a bowl game, and shared a division title.  I firmly believed they were going to become the top program in Conference USA for a stretch run.  Instead, they quickly went the other way, going 5-7 in 2017, 4-8 in 2018, and 1-11 in 2019.  The school enters 2020 on an 11 game losing streak, and overall, 2-16 against FBS opponents since their stunning upset of #13 Virginia Tech on September 13, 2018.  The result was a separation from head coach Bobby Wilder, who had been the only head coach the program had known since their 2009 resurrection.  As an odd bit of trivia, the school has only had two head coaches in program history.  The Monarchs existed from 1930-1940 under head coach Tommy Scott, then shut down for 69 years, and have had Bobby Wilder from 2009-2019.  The new head coach is former Penn State offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne.  It’s Rahne’s first head coaching job, stepping out from under James Franklin’s shadow.  Franklin initially hired Rahne as a graduate assistant at Kansas State, when Franklin took the offensive coordinator job in 2006; where he stayed until Franklin hired him as quarterbacks coach at Vanderbilt in 2011, then took Rahne with him to Happy Valley in 2014.  Simply said, a 1-11 Group of Five team hiring a helmet school coordinator sounds pretty good.  Hell, a Power Five school could typically make that hire.  But looking a little deeper is slightly problematic.  First, Rahne was quarterbacks coach at Penn State in 2014 and 2015, when Christian Hackenburg failed to develop, and Franklin was on the verge of getting fired.  It wasn’t until Joe Moorehead came in as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach that things turned around.  Then, when Moorehead left, despite quarterback Trace McSorley remaining, the Nittany Lions’ offensive S&P+ fell from #5 to #36, and on passing plays (to eliminate the Saquon Barkley factor), fell from #10 to #64.  I think there’s a solid chance Rahne wasn’t going to be Penn State’s offensive coordinator next year, even if Old Dominion hadn’t thrown him a life raft.  Then, you look at how Joe Moorehead did at Mississippi State, and if Rahne was the lesser version of him...well…  Then again, the role of a head coach is different from the role of a coordinator position coach, so maybe this is something he’ll be better at, but based on his credentials, all you can really point to is that James Franklin seems to love him.  He’ll have plenty of work to do with this offense, that averaged just 16.2 ppg on 4.1 ypp, both worst in the conference, and 5th and 2nd lowest in the FBS respectively.  There’s really nothing to lean on there, as the Monarchs were awful both running and passing the ball, with just 2.7 ypc rushing and 5.6 ypa passing.  There might be a solution in redshirt freshman Hayden Wolff, after Stone Smartt and Michigan State transfer Messiah deWeaver struggled through most of the season.  Wolff started three games in November, which allowed him to still preserve his redshirt.  He completed 58.1% of his passes, compared to 53.3% for the other two and 245 ypg compared to 146; and an interception per 43 attempts, compared to 30.5.  Defensively, Blake Seiler has a lot to work with.  Eight returning starters, including four all-conference players, from a unit that was actually decent last year.

	KEY PLAYERS
QB	Hayden Wolff, Freshman
RB	Lala Davis, Sophomore
C	Isaac Weaver, Senior
	.
DE	Keion White, Junior
LB	Lawrence Garner, Senior
CB	Kaleb Ford-Dement, Junior

Huh.  There is a small town there called Auburn interestingly enough.

https://www.cityofauburn-ga.org/

#114 South Alabama Jaguars

#9 in Sun Belt

It’s been hard enough trying to gain traction as a new program, that spent just one year in the FCS, before making the jump, but the transfer portal is not doing them any favors.  Fourteen Jaguars have put their names into the portal, including Cephus Johnson, who I brought up last year as a rising sophomore quarterback, who looked to be a future potential star.  He was benched midway through the year, after struggling with accuracy issues, and replaced with redshirt freshman Desmond Trotter.  While Johnson was dead last among FBS quarterbacks in Total QBR, it still is hard to build a program with this kind of turnover.  So, fully aware that I used this write up last year to tout what turned out to be the worst starting quarterback in the FBS, Trotter certainly looked the part, once the job became his in November.  He capped it with a 20 for 31, 279 yard, 4 touchdown, 1 interception, 58 rushing yard win over Arkansas State in the season finale.  This is particularly good news for receiver Kawann Baker, who was honorable mention All-Sun Belt last year, but seemed to be really unlocked by Trotter.  He had a pair of 75 yard catch and runs in the eight games Johnson started, but otherwise became a more consistent threat with Trotter.  For the defense, which was very solid for a 2-10 team last year, to maintain their 2019 standard, they will lean heavily on what could be a very, very good group of linebackers.  The problem is everything around them.  As solid as that group was against the run last year, they do need to take a major step forward as far as creating big plays.  The Jaguars had the second lowest sack rate in the Sun Belt a year ago, and over half of them were tallied by a pair of graduated defensive linemen.  They also had the second lowest number of turnovers forced.  One solution there might be Devin Rockette, who was a rotational cornerback a year ago, but seemed to have a nose for the football.  If he can cover well enough to stay on the field more consistently, that should be a boost.  Because last year showed that even if the defense is very solid, that’s not going to be enough with an offense that struggles as much as this one did.  While I’m optimistic that they should be at least enough better offensively with Trotter to counteract the losses on the defensive line and secondary; we saw that a net neutral just ends in a 2-10 season.  It’s tough to see any way this defense can play any more solidly this year, but they can find those ways to set up their offense better.  But God help them if they have any injury issues at all.

	KEY PLAYERS
QB	Desmond Trotter, Sophomore
WR	Kawann Baker, Senior
T	Jacob Shoemaker, Senior
	.
LB	Riley Cole, Senior
LB	Nick Mobley, Junior
LB	A.J. DeShazor, Junior

#113 Bowling Green Falcons

#8 in MAC

I was highly critical last year of the Bowling Green athletic department’s decision to make a philosophical change, in hiring a Texas high school coach, to attempt to work a Texas pipeline, and then fire him midway through his third season.  You didn’t hire Mike Jinks to be a quick fix; you hired him for his knowledge and ability to recruit, a new pocket of talent, and then kicked him out before any of his recruits began to matriculate up the depth chart.  Year 1 of the Scott Loeffler tenure didn’t do anything to change my mind, although, maybe Jinks’ recruits simply weren’t that good.  Bowling Green’s 3-9 record (which obviously isn’t great) actually didn’t tell the full story of just how bad they were.  They beat a 3-9 FCS team (Morgan State), the worst team in the FBS (Akron)...and then somehow Toledo.  In their 9 losses they weren’t even competitive, falling by an average of 39.7 ppg.  An 18 point loss to Western Michigan and a 28 point loss to Louisiana Tech were the only losses by less than 40 points.  While both Akron and Massachusetts had lower overall SP+ ratings, only Bowling Green ranked in the bottom 20 of the FBS in offense (#128), defense (#124) AND special teams (#130).  So why the reason for optimism?  A little bit of faith in the guys Jinks brought in, and a little bit of consistency.  It also helps if it turns out Grant Loy wasn’t actually their best quarterback.  Loy appeared in all 12 games, starting the final seven, but announced he was entering the transfer portal, even though Darius Wade, who started the other five games, graduated.  The likely new starter will be a true freshman, either Tucker Melton or Riley Keller, both 3* recruits from a really good first effort in Scott Loeffler’s first full recruiting class.  The Falcons’ class ranked #85 overall and #2 in the MAC, based on 247 composite, which is their second highest overall ranking ever in the 247 era, and tied for their best ranking within the MAC.  The aforesaid Melton, along with cornerback Deshawn Jones from Akron and defensive end Billie Roberts all rank among the top 10 recruits Bowling Green during that 19 year period.  Both players had Big Ten offers, and have a chance to contribute right away, particularly Jones, in a secondary that was the only position room hit hard by the transfer portal.  Even without that, he adds a much needed talent boost to a pass defense that surrendered 9.3 ypa and an opposing passer rating of 168.2, both of which were third worst in the FBS.  Back to the offense, whoever wins the quarterback job, does have some skill positions players to work with.  Quintin Morris, listed as a receiver, but who plays more of a tight end role, is there most consistent target; but redshirt sophomore Julian Ortega-Jones, one of the Texas recruiting payoffs, has the most upside, and is their big play threat.

	KEY PLAYERS
RB	Bryson Denley, Senior
WR	Quintin Morris, Senior
WR	Julian Ortega-Jones, Sophomore
	.
DE	Karl Brooks, Junior
LB	Kholbe Coleman, Senior
LB	Jerry Roberts, Junior

Sunday and Monday

#112 Massachusetts Minutemen

Independent

The transition from the 2018 team, that underachieved relative to its talent, to 2019, was going to be heavy no matter what.  That’s why making a coaching change away from Mark Whipple made a lot of sense.  Walt Bell, a noted big time recruiter, also hit the transfer portal hard, bringing in guys from Penn State, Notre Dame and West Virginia.  After a miserable season, in which UMass won just one game, the battle for the FBS basement against Akron, the transfer portal only went one way out of Amherst, with 13 players already leaving.  Is that a sign of a changing culture?  Mark Whipple has always had a good offensive mind, you can credit him for how Ben Roethlisberger’s early career took off.  But he was also a 62 year old man, in his second go round with the school, and I don’t think he was running a cutthroat program, or killing it on the recruiting trail.  Bell is the opposite of all of that, and that probably is not what Whipple’s signees valued when they committed.  I was skeptical about how Bell’s strengths would translate to a school like UMass, and compared it to Mike Locksley going to New Mexico.  This year, rather than the transfer portal to get the quick talent infusion, Bell looked to different means, taking 4 JUCO players (Including the #9 JUCO quarterback), 2 prep school kids, and a defensive end from Germany.  The Minutemen used three different starting quarterbacks last year, but only Andrew Brito returns in 2020.  Brito saw the most action of the three, but averaged just 4.88 ypa, second worst in the FBS among qualified passers.  So to say JUCO transfer Kyle Lindquist is in the mix is an understatement.  Bell thought he at least had one offensive stud returning in Bilal Ally, who averaged 5.1 ypc, despite playing behind an offensive line that was decent in pass blocking but was abysmal in every run blocking metric.  For comparison the team otherwise averaged 2.4 ypc.  But Ally put his name in the transfer portal, and while he hasn’t committed anywhere else, those things rarely turn around.  Hope there comes in a pair of early enrolees.  Ellis Merriweather from Garden City Community College and Jared Cole, from Ashburn, Virginia, for the nucleus of a potentially decent thunder-lightning combination.  Merriweather was rated as the #14 JUCO running back, and Cole was the #33 all-purpose back.  Won’t mean much if the interior line doesn’t get better, and considering Bell started four underclassmen on the line, including a pair of true freshmen last year, it should.  There may also be push from guard Aaron Beckwith, UMass’ highest rated high school recruit.  Bell needs the newcomers to contribute immediately, because while he did not shy away from starting youth last year, most of the production came from guys who are now gone.  The one exception is at receiver, led by breakout freshman O.C. Johnson Jr., who led the team in receiving, but hit a late freshman wall.  His game log is amazing.  He had 4 receptions for -15 yards over the final three games.  Three of his four receptions lost yardage.

	KEY PLAYERS
QB	Andrew Brito, Junior
WR	O.C. Johnson Jr., Sophomore
T	Larnel Coleman, Senior
	.
LB	Chinedu Ogbonna, Senior
LB	Cole McCubey, Senior
LB	Mike Ruang, Senior

#111 UNLV Rebels

#10 in Mountain West

At least geographically Tony Sanchez made some sense, after going 85-5 in six seasons at Bishop Gorman and winning six state titles.  But...much like I just discussed with Walt Bell, a mid-major going after a coach for his high level recruiting makes little sense.  No high end recruit is saying no to Clemson or Georgia or USC to go to New Mexico or UMass or UNLV, at least not enough, and access to those high end recruits was the biggest selling point for those coaches.  That said, Sanchez had finally delivered, securing not only easily his best class, but the school’s highest rated class in the 247 era.  It’s headlined by linebacker Brennon Scott, the school’s highest rated recruit since 2006, who did, in fact choose the Rebels over schools such as USC, Florida, Georgia and Texas.  But, on the other side, maybe now is the perfect time to cash in on the improved roster with a better coach.  That hopefully better coach is Marcus Arroyo, who has never been a head coach, but certainly knows the west coast football landscape.  He played at San Jose State, then his coaching career has included 5 years at his alma mater, 2 years at Wyoming, 2 years at Cal, and the last three as offensive coordinator at Oregon.  The downfall of the Rebels in 2019 was sorting out the quarterback room.  Armani Rogers, who looked so promising as a freshman in 2017, continued his career downward trajectory, and was eventually benched in favor of true freshman Kenyon Oblad.  Oblad improved dramatically as the season progress, and had the best game of the season in the finale, an overtime win over rival Nevada, where he completed 73% of his passes, with 3 touchdowns and no interceptions.  That gave the Rebels their first back to back wins over Nevada since winning five straight from 2000-2004.  But UNLV also added TCU transfer Justin Rogers.  So from budding star as a rising sophomore to a third string quarterback as a senior is how Armani Rogers’ career has gone.  It seems likely that it will either be Oblad or Justin Rogers winning the starting job.  Rogers just announced his transfer destination in late January, when Arroyo was well aware of what he was inheriting.  So that would suggest, in spite of the flashes he showed, Oblad has an uphill battle ahead of him.  The one gift that Arroyo did inherit was a treasure trove of returning skill positions to surround whoever wins the quarterback battle with, led running back Charles Williams.  Williams’ decision to return for his senior year, to run behind an offensive line that returns both starting tackles, to bookend all-conference guard Julio Garcia, after finishing second in the Mountain West in rushing yards per game, rushing touchdowns and yards per carry was surprising.  That goes with a deep stable of receivers and tight ends that returns 17 of 18 players (including some running backs, and one defensive back in a trick play) who caught a pass last year.  That’s why Bill Connolly ranks UNLV as having the most returning production in the conference (80%), and top 20 nationally.  So why so low?  Because by that same metric, the Rebels return just 29% of their defensive production, second worst in the FBS.  The only school with less returning defensive production is Utah.  The Utes were a senior-laden elite defense last year.  UNLV finished #11 in the Mountain West in both points and yards per play allowed, ahead of only New Mexico.  And now new defensive coordinator Peter Hansen gets to figure out how to coach their backups.

	KEY PLAYERS
RB	Charles Williams, Senior
WR	Randal Grimes, Junior
G	Julio Garcia, Senior
	.
LB	Farrell Hester II, Senior
S	Bryce Jackson, Junior
S	Greg Francis, Senior