From now through August, Bill C. will preview one college football team in great detail per weekday, working his way through all of FBS, conference by conference. Follow along!
Marshall might be a year away from another run

Kim Klement-USA TODAY SportsConfused? Check out the advanced-stats glossary here.
I was right and wrong about Marshall last year.
Read Article >Southern Miss is back among the living

Chuck Cook-USA TODAY SportsConfused? Check out the advanced-stats glossary here.
We like to think of program building as linear. You do pretty poorly in your first year, then you do a little better in your second, a little better in your third, etc., until one day you’re good.
Read Article >C-USA is still WKU and everybody else

Joshua Lindsey-USA TODAY SportsAt the end of each conference run-through, I take a look at how I perceive the conference’s balance of power heading into the season. This is in no way based on schedules, so they are not predictions. They’re just how I would rank the teams after writing thousands of words about each of them.
From the perspective of S&P+ averages, Conference USA was the worst in FBS last season. That was a surprise to see at first -- WKU was legitimately awesome, and three others were in the top 75 -- but it spoke to how bad the bottom half of the conference was.
Read Article >All WKU needs is a QB

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When you’re picturing how your program might be able to build from nothing into something, you’re basically picturing this chart:
Read Article >A Louisiana Tech transition year

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I didn’t love the Skip Holtz hire. My general thinking was Sonny Dykes had found something that works well in Ruston --- air raid offense, swarming secondary -- and straying from that recipe by going with a guy more defensive by nature (with a stolid offensive history) seemed misguided. Tech had won 17 games in two years, and while the Bulldogs were guaranteed to step backwards in 2013 after losing a ton of important personnel, I didn’t love the idea of Holtz being the one to guide them back.
Read Article >MTSU’s HC put his son at QB, and it’s working

Soobum Im-USA TODAY SportsConfused? Check out the advanced-stats glossary here.
In late-January 2010, coming off of a breakthrough 10-3 season that was the best in school history, Middle Tennessee head coach Rick Stockstill turned down an opportunity to jump up. Having already turned down the Memphis job, he said no to the East Carolina job that eventually went to Ruffin McNeill, choosing to remain in Murfreesboro.
Read Article >Can FAU get out of its own way?

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“The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps.”
Read Article >FIU showed upside in flashes

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Sometimes you can only learn so much about yourself. In 2014, Ron Turner’s second FIU team used a little bit of turnovers luck and quite a bit of defensive improvement to move from 124th to 96th in the F/+ rankings and from 1-11 to 4-8. It returned most of a bad offense and almost all of a strong defense, aside from a couple of safeties and the defensive coordinator.
Read Article >UTSA is all about upside

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Say this much for Ed Orgeron: he has an eye for talent. The famed defensive line coach, now at LSU, has struggled to land another head coaching job because of how disastrous his three-year tenure at Ole Miss was (from 2005-07, the fiery Orgeron went just 11-25 in Oxford). But while the failure seemed to mostly stem from a lack of organization or strong planning, Orgeron had an eye for coaching talent.
Read Article >Can Rice bounce back from sudden collapse?

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The first two words of last year’s Rice preview were “cruising altitude.” Hard jobs remain hard, but when you see what David Bailiff did at Rice from 2012-14, you can convince yourself that someone has figured out how to make a hard job easier.
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