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Phil Steele Sets His Sights On Georgia.

Kevin C. Cox

College football's most numerically prodigious prognosticator is counting down his top teams in college football, and today arrived at the Georgia Bulldogs, whom he placed in the #9 slot.

You can read Steele's 4 point font preview here: Steele Georgia '13 .
But the high points are these:

Steele projects Georgia to once again win the SEC East, in no part because of (and stop me if you've heard this one), the schedule. Steele notes that Georgia gets South Carolina at home and has only 3 "true road games." Of course one of the home games is against LSU, and Florida in Jacksonville isn't exactly a home game.

He also notes last year's +11 turnover advantage, a really good number that's just not guaranteed to persist into 2013.

The UGA offensive line returns a combined 101 career starts. While that's no guarantee of success, I'd rather have 101 starts returning than 10.

Steele notes that Garrison Smith was the top tackler on the defensive line last season, a fact which I totally missed. He agrees with me (and most of you) that despite losing a lot of beef and experience up front it's unlikely that Georgia will somehow manage to get worse against the run in 2013.

I tend to think of Phil's predictions as a bit like the lottery. If you buy 2.3 million tickets per week your odds of winning aren't actually that bad in the long run. Likewise, when you predict every single aspect of the college football season you're bound to be right about a few things. Regardless of accuracy, Steele's predictathon heralds the approaching return of college football season, and there's nothing wrong with that. Until later . . .

Go 'Dawgs!!!