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Weekly Update: Week 4
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
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