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BCS Standings: Texas is No. 2 Because They Played. That's Fair

Welcome to the BCS Standings, where you can not play and still look worse than you were last week.

1 Florida
2 Texas
3 Alabama
4 Iowa
5 Cincinnati
6 TCU
7 Boise State
8 Oregon
9 LSU
10 Georgia Tech

Texas moves to No. 2 because humans are easily distracted and go "Ooh. Shiny!" when Texas shellacks Oklahoma State while Alabama takes a week off. Computers, unimpressed by things like "they didn't play this week," continue to rank Alabama based on all nine weeks and so have the Tide and Texas tied.

Iowa remains in fourth place. And, no, not simply because the computers don't consider MOV; consider that despite the slow start against Indiana, the Hawkeyes still won by 18. The problem, if one exists, is in the use of the computers at all and not in the exclusion of MOV. At least for this week. In other weeks, sure, it's a problem.

Iowa is actually second per the computers this week, with Florida in first place. In fact, Florida maxed at 1.000 in the computer polls (remember, the best and worst scores are discarded) and actually nearly hit a perfect mark in the standings as a whole with a .992. Harris voters are the least impressed with the Gators but still have them No. 1.

No real surprise among the Cinderellas, which to me includes likely Big East champ Cincinnati as well as TCU and Boise State. As long as the Horned Frogs keep winning, we can hope that sanity will prevail and they will make a BCS bowl ahead of the Broncos. You can make a case that both of them deserve to be in the big-money games if they're undefeated, but I see no basis for putting an undefeated Boise in ahead of an undefeated TCU. The coaches appear to understand this hang-up I have on strength of schedule, something that eludes the luminaries that comprise the Harris Poll. The computers also put Boise below Oregon, something that would cause the human voters minds to seize up; "Boise ... defeated ... Oregon ... week ... one ... rest ... of ... season ... meaningless."

Georgia Tech also gets a boost from the computers to get into the Top 10 ahead of Penn State. This is good news for the ACC, which needs to preserve its BCS berth by having its champions continue to be ranked well despite the general perception that the league is mediocre.

The Harris voters continue to make a strong case for their expulsion from the standings. Not only is Boise ranked ahead of TCU and Iowa but in front of Cincinnati, which hasn't played Georgia's schedule but also hasn't played Boise's. Like the coaches, they have Oklahoma in the Top 20 because, well, because the name of the team is Oklahoma.

The losses by South Carolina and Ole Miss excise them from the standings; for the SEC, it's the feast of the Top 10 or the famine of irrelevance.