RB LaMichael James races to the top spot among all fantasy RBs. (Icon SMI)

Tier 1 – Above All Else

QB Andrew Luck decided to stay in school...Pac 12 defenses beware. (Icon SMI)

The newly minted Pac 12 now brings a wider assortment of potential fantasy talent to the season. As usual, the West Coast bias is in play here, leaving this as the last of the Big 6 conferences to report. We’ll look to start first with a breakdown on the Pac 12 QBs.

First Tier – Start worthy

Andrew Luck, Stanford – Much like Matt Leinert in years past, Luck decided to stay in school versus the riches of the NFL. Hopefully the decision works out better for him, especially considering HC Harbaugh went the other direction and jumped to the pros. Despite all that, our anticipation is that Luck will pass for over 3,000 yards, hit for 30+ TDs and be the #1 scoring QB out of the Pac 12. Be confident in selecting him, he’s playing for keeps this year. Read the rest of this entry →

On Monday we debuted our exclusive TEBOW rankings for the Fantasy College Football Invitational (FCFI) Expert League format (18 teams, 2QB, etc.), and I wanted to get new rankings for the major formats ahead of the weekend as this tends to be the first big draft weekend of the year.

Tim Tebow created one of the greatest seasons in college football history and won 2007 Heisman Trophy. His excellence inspired our model that will forever seek out the best players in the sport. (Icon SMI)

A refresher - Talent Excess Budgeted Over Walkon (TEBOW) applies some time-tested fantasy principles to CFO Drew Smith’s projections, helping you better prepare for your unique draft setups. I think I can credit Baseball Prospectus with the fantasy application Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) concept, in that any member of a fantasy roster only has value if expected to perform over the value of a player on the margin of the league’s starting lineup requirements.

So for our purposes, while Case Keenum is universally accepted as the creme de la creme of fantasy college QBs, his value to a given fantasy roster is determined by the value relative to a replacement QB in your league. Assuming a 16-team league, if you play 2 QBs his value is greater than in a 1QB league since the marginal utility is QB 33 versus QB17.

Got it? Not yet, please realize you can now compare the relative values among the positions to see who is a better overall pick. Compare Keenum’s TEBOW value versus Justin Blackmon or La Michael James and on down the line. We are going much deeper after the jump. (UPDATED WITH FULL RANKINGS ON BOTH FORMATS)

If you want custom work, email me at vince[AT]fantasycollegeblitz[dot]com and the only cost is telling a friend about the site. Find me on twitter @vincemullins too.

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Fantasy College Football Invitational Results for Running backs Read the rest of this entry →