This is a post featuring meaningless gridiron musings, and it’s not even June yet.
I saw this chart on Phil Steele’s site a couple of days ago. It’s an interesting look at the percentage of lettermen returning for each FBS team, although perhaps not really indicative of how a team may do this season. For example, I suspect that Southern California, next-to-last in the category, is still going to be really good.
North Carolina State, which will play The Citadel in late September, is also near the bottom of the list, with a lettermen return rate of 59.6%. That got me thinking, what’s The Citadel’s return rate? It turns out to be not much higher (62.9%).
I compiled a similar list of The Citadel’s opponents this year in a chart. Well, not all the opponents, for the simple reason that I couldn’t find readily available numbers. I found practically no information about Charleston Southern’s returnees, to name just one school, although I would imagine that since the Buccaneers were 0-11 last season there are going to be some changes.
I have return/loss statistics for eight of the eleven schools playing the Bulldogs. As I get more information for the others, I’ll add those numbers to the chart.
Anyway, this is what I came up with for eight opponents, plus The Citadel (excuse the less-than-stellar presentation):
Team 2011 L’men Lost Returning % Returning
Appy 55 22 33 60.0%
GSU 80 24 56 70.0%
NCSU 52 21 31 59.6%
Wofford 64 17 44 68.8%
WCU 63 21 42 66.7%
UTC 65 20 45 69.2%
Furman 62 17 45 72.6%
VMI 54 19 35 64.8%
The Citadel 62 23 39 62.9%
Among returning offensive and defensive starters, Chattanooga returns 16 of 22 (8 offensive/8 defensive); Georgia Southern, 15 of 22 (8/7); Appalachian State, 14 of 22 (5/9); North Carolina State, 14 of 22 (7/7); Western Carolina, 14 of 22 (8/6); VMI, 11 of 22 (5/6); and Furman, 14 of 22 (6/8).
Some links, if you’re interested or bored or both:
Appalachian State 2012 Preseason Prospectus
Georgia Southern 2012 Quick Facts
A report from Charleston Southern’s spring game
VMI 2012 Quick Facts, Newspaper report on VMI spring football, school report on final spring scrimmage
Western Carolina 2012 Quick Facts and A report from Western Carolina’s spring game
A report from Elon’s spring game
North Carolina State 2012 Spring Prospectus
Phil Steele’s team page for The Citadel
Jeff Hartsell’s writeup of The Citadel’s spring game (over two months ago, sure, but in case you missed it)
—
Less than 100 days to go…
Filed under: Football, The Citadel | Tagged: Appalachian State, Charleston Southern, Elon, Furman, Georgia Southern, North Carolina State, SoCon, The Citadel, UT-Chattanooga, VMI, Western Carolina, Wofford |
The Sports Arsenal 
Leave a Reply