The start of spring practice for all 125 college football teams is a chance to start fresh and forget the bad results that came along with 2012. For a handful of coaches, spring practice is also the first opportunity to turn around a program and save their job for 2014.

College football's 2013 National Signing Day is in the books and Athlon Sports kicks off its 2013 team recruiting rankings countdown with an in-depth look at the best classes in the nation. Steve Sarkisian reworked his defensive coaching staff following the 2011 season and it paid immediate returns on the recruiting trail and eventual returns on the field. Defensive coaches Tosh Lupoi, Peter Sirmon and Justin Wilcox have had a year to recruit and this trio is clearly making a big impact as the Huskies finished second in the Pac-12 in the team rankings. 

We have ranked every college football program in the country, based on the attractiveness of the position from a coaching perspective. We considered many factors — tradition, facilities, location, money  — but in the end, we simply asked ourselves the following question: Where would we want to coach? Today we focus on the Pac-12.

Recruiting in college football is downright nasty. It is a cutthroat, cannibalistic big business that is microscopically analyzed by fans, administrators and media members alike. The Pac-12 has watched its league and programs grow substantially in the past few years. Commissioner Larry Scott, the Pac-12 Network, a new media rights contract, six new coaches in the last two seasons and a variety of major facilities upgrades give Pac-12 schools plenty to sell to recruits.

With college football’s spring practice and basketball’s postseason around the corner, Athlon Sports decided this would be a good time to evaluate each school’s coaching tandem.

National Signing Day 2013 has come and gone. Fans, coaches and players alike rode a yearlong roller-coaster to the first Wednesday in February and it all ended with over 3,000 new college football players.

Most of the dust has settled on the Class of 2013, however, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still plenty of fireworks to come on National Signing Day 2013. Five of the top ten players in the nation are still left on the board and those decisions will undoubtedly influence the national team rankings in a big way.

Additionally, 12 of the top 50 are still left uncommitted and more than two dozen total national — or four-star — recruits have yet to make their final college decision. Here is a complete list of the National Signing Day announcments:

Preseason prognosticators like Athlon Sports — the most accurate college football preview magazine on newsstands — use many things to predict what the coming football season will look like. Returning starters, scheduling, historic trends, coaching, pending off-the-field issues and, of course, recruiting rankings all help Athlon editors predict the future of college football.

National Signing Day 2013 is right around the corner and Athlon Sports is releasing its position-by-position rankings for the Class of 2013 based on the Athlon Consensus 100. Who is left on the board? Who has the best class at one position? Who had positional needs to fill?

National Signing Day 2013 is right around the corner and Athlon Sports is releasing its position-by-position rankings for the Class of 2013 based on the Athlon Consensus 100. Who is left on the board? Who has the best class at one position? Who had positional needs to fill?