It’s week three of our four-week school year here at STACK. I’m looking forward to graduation next Friday!

We've completed all 21 sport rankings, and you can expect some changes when you open up your November/December issue. We have new number one teams for men’s basketball, women’s soccer, men’s cross country, women’s golf, men’s tennis, lacrosse, softball and men’s and women’s track and field.

Another eye-opening item in the rankings is watching the so-called “mid-majors” rise up our charts. Some of these smaller schools have put together impressive resumes on the field and in the classroom over the past three years and are beginning to be recognized in our rankings. I predict in the next two years we'll crown a “mid-major” in one sport.

Now that I've revealed a few surprises, I’ll dive into the mind-numbing process our assistant content director Kyle Woody and myself went through this week. For about a day-and-a-half, Mr. Woody sat next to me with his mint Mac fired up reading number after number to me while I inputted the stats into Microsoft Word charts so our magazine’s designers can layout the page.

I bet we could rattle off any school’s U.S. World News World Report ranking or team’s APR at the drop of a hat. That’s what happens when you’ve researched and fact-checked every school and sport known to man... multiple times.

This wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t already have to input the numbers in Excel files for the Web! After sifting through thousands and thousands of numbers over the last three weeks, I can speak for everyone here at STACK when I say next Friday is going to be a great day.

Completing this enormous project gives us much pride here in the office because this issue is one of our favorites. It looks good and gives our readers a great start on their college journey.

Come back next week for an update of the overall top 50.

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