A week with no excitement. A week with total destruction of college football’s top ten. A week with complete parity and mid-major capitalization. Does this college football season have an identity yet? Is it one of chaos, mid-majors or of traditional powers reclaiming the spotlight?

Certainly, Week 5 had its fair share of exciting match ups featuring conference and non-conference foes battling it out as the first BCS rankings loom ever closer, but for a change of place, not many upsets took place on a ripe weekend for one.

The biggest of course, would be Miami (FL) taking advantage of an obviously weakened Oklahoma team in a non-conference battle, and beating them 21-20. The Hurricanes had just come off a loss to Virginia Tech, which if they had won, would have set them up nicely for a run for the national title, but this huge victory over the Sooners may give them hope yet.

Ranked match ups only come so often, especially in conference, but if you want to make a bet where one might happen, the SEC is probably the place to look.

Georgia and LSU took the field in between the hedges to make a case for complete SEC supremacy among the six BCS conferences. In pulling out the late win, it is possible that LSU has finally legitimized the fact that three of the top four teams in all polls are SEC combatants.

The projected BCS won’t look much different this weekend, we’ll give you that much, but its likely that among the jumpers will be Miami, and maybe even a small boost for LSU, but enough for a position increase? Maybe, maybe not, we’ll have to see what the human polls give us in the morning.

Maybe the biggest upset of the night came from the mid-major world, where Houston, one of three mid-majors believed to still have a shot at a BCS-bust, fell in an absolute shootout in Texas, falling to UTEP 58-41.

That leaves just TCU and Boise State as possibly BCS busters, and the road looks bright for both, with forgiving schedules, making it quite possible that we will finally see a year with two BCS busters in the ten BCS bowl spots. Who knows?

-BCSKnowHow.com

Parity.

It’s a great thing for a college football fan. On any given Saturday, anything can happen. Or at least that’s what ESPN wants you to think.

Evidentially, it looks like that’s exactly what we’ve got this season, as the top teams continue to fall, and fall hard to unranked and out of the blue opponents putting on clinics to beat the teams the “experts” had deemed worthy of top national rankings.

This weekend’s slate didn’t seem ripe for any major upsets, but after Thursday came and went with another one of the big upsets we’ve already come to expect from this season, the tone was set for even more on Saturday.

First to fall was #6 Cal. And fall they did to an Oregon team that had looked listless against Boise State just a few Thursdays ago. Then it was #5 Penn State, falling to Iowa as a top five team for the second straight season in a row, making it six top six teams to lose to unranked opponents on the season, approaching 2007-style numbers just four short weeks into the season and still three long weeks from the first BCS standings.

Speaking of, the projected BCS standings definitely took a hit this weekend, with four of the top eight teams losing, including Miami (FL) who lost to Virginia Tech in a match up of ranked teams. But this week will mark the first appearance of the Harris Poll, one-third of the final BCS calculation, bringing us ever closer to a fully-projectable BCS standings. Four of the six computers are also up and running, making us 89% of the way to a full BCS calculation.

Making major moves this week will be all the teams that lost, yes, but the losses leave four very open spots for new teams, which this week will likely include Virginia Tech, Oklahoma and (cue the BCS detractors) USC. Yes USC, who just two weekends ago lost to a very unranked Washington team would likely enter as #8 in a BCS standings if released this morning.

The Harris Poll was released for the first time this weekend, making BCS projecting a little easier, and results were surprising at best. The top three remained the same, as the Harris had little to say different than the Coaches’, but the shake up is strong after than. LSU, Virginia Tech and Boise State all move up, taking the vacated spots of Penn State, Ole Miss and Cal. Surprisingly, or not surprisingly depending on your rooting affiliation, one loss Oklahoma and USC both reenter the top 10 very soon after their respective losses.

The BCS is certainly shaping as we approach its October 18th release date, but in the intervening weeks, even more shake up is certainly a possibility.

-BCSKnowHow.com

And why not? A week following a rather unexciting weekend of college football, where most of the favorites pulled out easy victories, and little shakeup was seen in the rankings, even the most old-school and staunch of college football followers must have been expecting some sort of realignment to come from this weekend.

Recent history has probably readied us for the constant jumble that early season college football brings us almost every year, and this past weekend was no different.

It all started rather early, as Washington, who just before last week’s victory, had been riding at 15 game losing streak, decided to turn their attack all the way up, and shocked the USC Trojans 16-13.

Just a week ago, it seemed the Trojans were ready to reclaim their spot in the BCS National Championship game after a great come-from-behind victory over the Buckeyes of Ohio State, but the shocking loss sent the Trojans tumbling in the standings and may have once again dashed their hopes for a national title.

BYU, who also had high hopes of playing for a national title, hoping to break the six BCS conference strangle hold on the event, also fell hard, but in their case, much much harder, 54-28 to a very hard hitting Florida State squad.

This allowed a large collection of teams to take jumps up the standings, especially Miami, who after defeating Georgia Tech on the national Thursday night broadcast, skyrocketed into the top tens across the board.

Most of the teams behind the Trojans also took steps up towards the top, but nothing too shocking. Boise State replaces BYU as the mid-major of the hour, as they make a top ten appearance once again, cementing themselves as mid-major darlings of the nation on a permanent basis.

You can find a projected top eight BCS standings at BCSKnowHow.com!

LSU and Mississippi get a lot of help in BCS Know How’s Projected BCS because of the strength of their future schedule in SEC, which will likely be very big when it comes around to Novemeber. That puts four teams of the top eight from the SEC, which may change once SEC conference play hits its stride.

-BCSKnowHow.com