The BCS Standings for this week have been released and boy are they surprising. All the movement among the top 10 teams in the na ... What? All of the Top 8 remain the same? Where's the fun in that?
1 Florida
2 Alabama
3 Texas
4 TCU
5 Cincinnati
6 Boise State
7 Georgia Tech
8 LSU
9 Pittsburgh
10 Ohio State
Pittsburgh and Ohio State are your new entrants, replacing Iowa and Southern Cal.
With the strongest part of its schedule already behind it, TCU is locked out of the title game unless Texas loses somewhere between now and the end of the season. But then you probably already knew that. That makes the BCS' contention that it's a friend of the Mountain West Conference a little difficult to believe. Of course, that probably also belongs in the category "things you already knew." At least they're not behind Boise State any more -- something that readers of the blog know pleases me to no end.
Oregon is also no longer behind Southern Cal, mostly because the Trojans' 55-21 loss to Stanford drops the best team in LA to No. 18, one place -- one! -- behind the team that just defeated them by 34. Blame the computers for that particular mess; they have Southern Cal ahead of the Cardinal for reasons passing understanding.
In fact, beyond putting Alabama ahead of Texas, the computers have an interesting view of the world. Cincinnati is still leading Texas and Georgia Tech is ahead of Boise State. DON'T THEY KNOW?!? A Big XII team is automatically better than a Big East team and an undefeated team is automatically better than a team with a loss. This is not in dispute! Why are you introducing objective analysis into this system?!? Leave it to the humans! We know what we're doing! Well, beyond the whole having Southern Cal ahead of Oregon thing.
The humans appear to be the only thing keeping No. 22 BYU and No. 24 Houston in the poll -- BYU because they defeated a mediocre Oklahoma team two and half months ago, Houston because ... well, I really have no idea why Houston. It's hard to tell precisely because the BCS doesn't appear to have released the PDF telling us exactly where the computers rank those teams. Instead, we get the gee-whiz geek-pleasing raw numbers. Houston's .0200 and BYU's .0100 are well below all the other Top 25 BCS teams, though, so it's safe to say they would be in the others receiving megabytes category. No. 25 Cal is in thanks to the chips; the Golden Bears are No. 29 in the Harris and No. 30 per the coaches.
If I had to make my guesses for the BCS bowls now -- and why not? -- this is something like what I see shaping up:
BCSNCG: Florida/Alabama winner vs. Texas
Rose Bowl: Oregon vs. Ohio State
Sugar Bowl: Florida/Alabama loser vs. Cincinnati
Orange Bowl: Georgia Tech vs. Penn State
Fiesta Bowl: TCU vs. Oklahoma State
These are guesses. The Sugar gets the last selection this time around, so they get stuck with the Bearcats. Tim Brando isn't as crazy as I thought he was for thinking Penn State has a BCS shot; my guess is that the Nittany Lions would get it before Iowa based on reputation.
This is now; wait until the rest of the season has been played. It's unlikely the standings will stay as still as they did this week in the future.