A Rough Guide to 2010 College Football via Returning Starters

You're probably overloaded with schmaltz this deep into the Winter Olympics, but rest assured: college football still exists. Phil Steele's main goal in life is to remind you of this 365 days a year, so here's a bunch of data about returning starters for your perusal. People use these things as rough guides to how much teams will progress or regress each year and we're no different around these parts. A brief rundown of teams that jump out.

Best-timed departure. Congratulations, Skip Holtz: you managed to get out before the bottom (probably) fell out. Back-to-back CUSA champion East Carolina returns all of eight guys, the fewest nationally. If Jim Leavitt didn't have to choke a walk-on, Holtz would be frantically trying to keep his mojo going before the shine wore off.

Soft landing. No one expects much out of Notre Dame next year sans Clausen and Tate. They're switching to a spread offense and can't break in the only experienced quarterback because he'll be rehabbing a knee injury until fall. But the Irish do get nine guys back on defense and something like eight wins for Brian Kelly would instantly win the hearts of beleaguered ND fans.

Hot seat most likely to turn ejector. Arizona State was pretty terrible last year and only return ten guys, starting quarterback not included. Tim Brewster just got a contract extension but suffered through a terrible spate of decommits in his crappy recruiting class and returns just two defensive starters. Most of the offense returns, but since Minnesota's on its fourth offensive coordinator in five years that might be less help than it would normally.

Next year's most overrated. Looking for teams that are probably going to enter next season overrated? Find teams that return quarterbacks and a lot of offense but lose a bunch of defense. Alabama is a clear winner here with a fairly meh quarterback back along with eight offensive starters but just two guys on defense coming back and neither specialist. The Tide has the fewest returning starters of anyone the SEC.

USC is also a candidate here with only 12 guys back and a new head coach who may, in fact, be brain damaged. Texas loses Colt McCoy and has 14 guys back; not terrible but they can expect a dropoff.

Fiesta redux. You've probably heard about Boise State's 23(!) returning starters and their game against Virginia Tech that may set them up for a national title run, but TCU's got 18 starters back of its own, including the quarterback. With Utah and BYU both getting hit pretty hard, the Mountain West is theirs for the taking. We could have a true BCS meteor scenario at the end of the year.

Bouncing back? North Carolina has the most guys back in the ACC and their quarterback returning, and disappointing season from both Texas A&M and Missouri should go by the wayside with 19 starters back each. Syracuse returns 20 starters, too, but remains Syracuse.

The big jump should be from Washington, though. They've got 20 guys back and get Jake Locker for a senior year. They went from horrible to bad in year one of Steve Sarkisian; this year they could be actually good.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.