USA Today Coaches’ Poll

Harris Interactive Poll

USA Today Coaches’ Poll

Harris Interactive Poll

USA Today Coaches’ Poll

Harris Interactive Poll

The first BCS standings are nearly a week old. Teams now know the climb that faces them over the next seven weeks if they are to make it to the national title game.

That climb starts tomorrow.

Almost every single team ranked in the top 25 will face a tough in-conference match up this weekend, highlighted by four of the top five BCS teams facing tough road games in hostile environments.

No. 1 Florida will travel to Mississippi State, to face a Bulldog team that will be no pushover. And from the looks of the past few Gator SEC games, a few mistakes may send Florida tumbling down the BCS rankings if they aren’t careful.

No. 4 Boise State risks its undefeated record at Hawaii, never an easy place to claim victory, against the Rainbow Warriors in a tough WAC matchup.

No. 5 Cincinnati travels to Louisville to take on a Cardinal team looking for any sort of redemption, trying to reclaim the Big East glory that has become all Cincinnati’s in the past two years.

But the real test of the weekend will be the No. 3 Texas Longhorns, already with doubts cast about them already due to poor showings against Oklahoma and Colorado in two of their opening Big 12 conference games.

No. 2 Alabama, playing at home, doesn’t come up all roses, facing a Tennessee team looking for a way to make some national noise in coach Lane Kiffin’s first year.

But the game of the weekend would find itself in the most unlikely of places, Provo, Utah. BYU and TCU will face off in a battle of two of the three BCS busting hopes of the nation (the other being Boise’s bid). For TCU, a victory could spell increased support from both the computers and the human element. For BYU, a return to the top ten could be in order after falling following a loss to Florida State.

This week following the initial release of the BCS standings always presents intriguing storylines. How will teams that felt they have been slighted by the computers in the first iteration of the BCS iteration react?

Something to look for in the coming weeks is the effect of conference scheduling on the computer rankings. For those conferences with multiple teams in the top 15 (Pac 10, SEC, Big 12) the conference portion of those highly ranked teams may provide a boost in the computers.

For those conferences with lower turnout in the BCS rankings (Big 10, Big East, ACC, BCS buster conferences), the coming weeks may kick out the stool from under their high rankings, as many will take a shot from the computers, and see their averages decline.

But that’s all discussion for the future, for now, lets enjoy a weekend in which 24 of the top 25 AP teams are in action, and see just what the BCS standings look like on Sunday.

Maybe we’ll see something completely different.

The BCS rankings cause controversy. There’s no debating that.

But usually that controversy doesn’t come until at least a few weeks into the BCS rankings, when people can see a trend that they might disagree with.

This year however, there may be some griping to do just after one BCS rankings, following one of the most exciting and jam-packed action weekends of the college football season.

The top three of the first BCS standings may give some Alabama fans some pain, as the Crimson Tide sit at No. 2 on the first rankings, although the Associated Press poll, which is no longer a part of the BCS, had the Tide at No. 1 in their poll.

Alabama sits behind Florida, who has struggled to win the past few weeks, but in the eyes of the voters and computers, is strong enough to warrant the .046 point lead over the Tide.

Interestingly, Boise State and Cincinnati follow Texas (No. 3) in the BCS standings. Boise State gets healthy love from the computers and the human element, but Cincinnati is able to jump USC, who find themselves the victim of a poor computer ranking, and at No. 7 in the first BCS rankings.

In between the Bearcats and Trojans you can find the class of the Big 10, Iowa. The Hawkeyes also got love from the computers that was not shown in the human element, as they ranked seventh and eighth in the two polls, but find themselves at No. 6 in the BCS, just .0001 points behind Cincinnati for that No. 5 spot.

Ready to pounce on the BCS buster opportunity if Boise State is to falter, TCU enters the rankings at No. 8, a guaranteed BCS bowl berth position for the Horned Frogs if the Broncos are unable to win out.

LSU and Miami, each with one loss on their record round out the top 10, and will definitely need some major help to climb back up the rankings, where they had stood earlier this season.

Oregon, whose only loss came to Boise State, comes in at No. 11 followed by Georgia Tech, whose shocking victory over previous No. 4 Virginia Tech dropped the Hokies out of the top 12, and let the Yellow Jackets make an appearance in the year’s first BCS top 12.

BCS Rankings – October 18th

USA Today Coaches’ Poll

Harris Interactive Poll

It wasn’t anything terribly exciting, but another weekend in college football passed, and the national picture begins to get a little clearer.

The weekend shaped up to be one filled with tight contests and big scores, but instead what we got was a low-scoring, minimal tension weekend that underwhelmed most college football fans.

The highlight of the weekend’s slate was Florida vs. LSU, a matchup between two of the top teams in the country, and two SEC rivals. The return of Tim Tebow was supposed to amp up the offense and increase the urgency of the game, but in the end, a 13-3 Gator victory seemed telegraphed from the beginning.

True, this will likely knock LSU out of the national title hunt for a while, but the Tigers will get the chance to rebound with victories over Alabama, and then a rematch with the Gators in the SEC Championship Game, if they get that far.

For the Gators, their odd displacement at No. 3 on the projected BCS standings will no longer be an issue, as the victory over LSU, who held the number one spot in all five computer rankings, will boost the Gator’s computer score.

Alabama also survived a SEC matchup with Ole Miss, easily dispatching of the Rebels 22-3 in a defense heavy contest. The Crimson Tide will duel with the Gators for the final number one ranking of the projected BCS, as after next week’s slate of games, the fully functional BCS standings will finally arrive.

Among those who also won on this favorites day; Iowa, who won in thrilling fashion, holding off yet another Tate Forcier comeback attempt in their Big 10 match up; Texas, who fended off a halftime deficit to take control in their victory over Colorado; and Virginia Tech, who continue to make their case as the best one-loss team in the nation.

Unbeatens remained unbeaten, most favorites won out, and the college football world now can only wait for the home stretch of eight weeks, all of which have the BCS to credit for their intensity and drama.

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Updates will come tomorrow after the human polls are released and the projected BCS will be more clear.

-BCSKnowHow.com

As we approach day zero, where the BCS rankings are finally and officially revealed to the world, BCS Know How’s projected BCS rankings are taking a turn.

Yes, sure the “BCS Know How Projected BCS Standings” were fun, taking a good guess at what I thought they might be. And truthfully I wasn’t far off. Sure I knew that Florida surprisingly enough wouldn’t be #1 if the BCS was released, but I left them there because of their overwhelming domination of the human element of the BCS.

Well, now that five of the six computer rankings have been released, the reality has set in. The computers just do not love Florida. At all.

Yet with the addition of the fifth computer rankings, who ALL claim LSU as the best team in the nation, and seem to overwhelmingly prefer Alabama and Virginia Tech over Florida as well, I am forced to change it to a more realistic calculation.

The new standings can be found below and at BCSKnowHow.com and all pages on the site.

It’s very surprising to see three SEC teams lined up all in a row at numbers one through three, but that just proves the strength in opinion while simultaneously proving the SEC’s strength in numbers.

The SEC has been and continues to be a dominant conference, and yes, after this weekend, the rankings are sure to change, but for now the Southeastern Conference ain’t nothing to mess with.

Without any further ado. The projected BCS rankings, within a 94.166% confidence: