It took us 8 weeks but we finally have a shake-up at the top of the polls. What was a pretty pedestrian Saturday (in terms of upsets, at least) absolutely blew up with the last two major games to go final. Michigan State upset Wisconsin on a hail mary and Texas Tech absolutely stunned the college football world in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma made a furious comeback late but could not convert an onside kick down by three late. And yes, I will get to why that was important in a bit.
These two upsets did a few things. First of all, I will now say that Oklahoma State controls their own destiny. I needed to wait until the polls slid them up enough to be sure, but I can now definitively say that if Oklahoma State wins the rest of their games impressively that they will play for the national title. Stanford may stay ahead of them in the Coaches’ Poll, but the Cardinal will not catch them in the Harris Poll and there will be quite a decent-sized gap between the two in the computers.
We are still several upsets away from even bringing Boise State into the conversation for real, but they are lurking ever closer to seizing a spot in the BCS National Championship Game. Boise State fans have to be counting down the number of teams left that they need to lose. There are now probably only 4 with 7 games left in the season, two of whom (Kansas State and Oklahoma State) will play each other. And you can bet that the city of Boise is cheering loudly for Georgia, Toledo, Tulsa, and Nevada to win their conferences and run the table in them if possible.
And since LSU and Alabama are both on a bye this week, they will be #1 and #2 when they meet on November 5th.
Teams Still Under BCS At-Large Consideration:
This column is not here to predict results, just to tell you the facts. So we will pretend like every team is still capable of winning out. That being said, there are some teams who will not get a BCS at-large bid no matter what they do the rest of the year. Some of these teams could still qualify automatically if they win their conferences. For the first time this year, we will list the teams that still have a chance at at-large qualification because that list is now shorter than the list of teams eliminated. (This section has been very intricately thought out. If anyone has questions why a particular team is or isn’t on this list please feel free to ask and I will explain my thought process.)
ACC: Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Clemson.
Big XII: Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Baylor, Texas.
Big East: None.
Big Ten: Penn State, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan State, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio State.
Pac 12: Stanford, Oregon, Washington, Arizona State.
SEC: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, LSU, Arkansas, Auburn.
Non-AQs: Only Boise State, Houston, Southern Miss, and TCU can still reach a BCS Bowl.
It is beginning to look more and more likely that the Big East champion will not be in the top 16 of the BCS. Therefore a non-AQ conference champion will likely only have to reach the top 16 to automatically qualify for a BCS Bowl. Because of Southern Mississippi’s strong record and good position in the polls, it seems likely that they can reach the top 16 if they run the table, especially if that means they beat an undefeated Houston in the Conference-USA championship game. I took them off of this list too early and have now added them back in.
The Polls:
Finally, the polls got a bit interesting this week. The first thing to note is how little Oklahoma dropped in both, really. I don’t usually call out the polls in this section, but I will here for a minute. There seems to be little logical reason why Wisconsin would fall farther than Oklahoma when Wisconsin lost at the last second on the road to a ranked team while Oklahoma was really dominated for much of the game at home against a much worse team. First of all, we have to realize that votes received is all that matters, not the position each team is in. So in reality, Wisconsin lost less than Oklahoma in each poll. Also, the Oklahoma game was delayed over an hour by lightning. The game did not end until well after 1 AM eastern time and most voters (coaches especially) probably did not watch the game and only saw the final score-which was actually closer than the final score of Wisconsin’s loss.
There is an important difference in the two polls this week. The Coaches’ Poll has Stanford ahead of Oklahoma State while the Harris Poll has the Cowboys ahead. Stanford has a slightly bigger lead in the Coaches’ Poll than Oklahoma State has in the Harris, but the difference is pretty negligible. Stanford’s SOS will also be pretty bad this year, so Oklahoma State should end the year with enough advantage over Stanford in the computers to make up for being even half a poll spot behind the Cardinal in each of the human polls. That is why I said at the beginning that Oklahoma State controls their own destiny now.
The other really interesting thing to note is how the Harris Poll treated Boise State. Boise did not blow out Air Force this past week, and not winning in a blowout has usually hurt Boise in the polls in the past. Boise actually gained votes in the poll, but they got jumped by both Oklahoma State and Stanford. We can only speculate if the cause was Boise’s lack of a blowout or an unwillingness to slide Boise State so high this late in the season. I would honestly guess that it’s a combination of the two, but at this point it’s largely irrelevant. We have known since the beginning of the season what Boise State needs to happen to make the NCG. Nothing yet has changed that.
The one other team to address is Kansas State. I saw a lot of people saying the Wildcats control their own destiny because they play in the Big XII, which looks to be the strongest conference for SOS this year. And yes, Kansas State has a very strong computer profile. But for some reason the Wildcats are getting very little love in the polls. For a team with a lot of good wins (albeit no great ones yet) the human polls are just refusing to give them credit. That will probably change if they beat Oklahoma and Oklahoma State ack-to-back, but based on the lack of poll support the Wildcats have I really can’t see them jumping enough teams to reach the top 2 without some outside help.
The Computers:
The first thing to point out about the computers is that USC is in the top 25 of every computer ranking. However, since they are not bowl eligible the BCS has decided to not count them in the computers. They still receive their ranking so that the computers can function properly, but when counting the top 25 teams in each computer USC is just jumped over.
Stanford made some nice gains in Billingsley’s rankings this week, thanks largely to Washington’s inflated ranking due to an easy earlier schedule and a bowl upset of Nebraska last year. If Stanford can beat #14 USC on the road this week then they will jump over Clemson and Boise State to #4 in the Billingsley Report, which might help towards moving them up to #4 in the BCS next week, regardless of what Clemson does (Boise State has a bye).
I think that this week is a good week to illustrate a very important fact about Sagarin’s rankings. Sagarin does not hold losses to good teams against you. His theory is that just because a team lost to #1 that doesn’t mean that they can’t still be #2. So for everyone wondering how he has Auburn at #9, the reason is because they have decent wins and have no bad losses. Every one of Auburn’s losses is self-contained. (Meaning that their only losses are to undefeated teams or to a team that only has losses to one of those undefeated teams.) As soon as Auburn’s losses no longer remain self-contained, meaning they lose to a team with other losses or Arkansas, LSU, or Clemson lose a game, Auburn’s ranking will drop like a stone.
There isn’t much too interesting to point out about Wolfe this week, other than the fact that Stanford will probably not jump more than one or two teams even with a win on the road at USC. Same with the Colley Matrix. Unless Oklahoma State or Clemson loses this week, Stanford will not move up more than one spot in Colley’s rankings. Anderson’s rankings have a little irony at the moment. They have Kansas State at #4 but at a pretty close margin to LSU and Alabama. If Kansas State beats Oklahoma this week they should jump both of those teams. That means that next week, on November 5th, Anderson will also have his top 2 competing against each other, but they won’t be LSU and Alabama.
Massey once again has not published his rankings by Monday morning, but I don’t expect any surprises in there this week. Once again, the “SchF” column that projects each team’s entire SOS based on current rankings is a very useful tool.
Week 9 Implications:
3 of the top 4 teams are on byes this week, but that won’t stop it from having a great lineup of games. In fact, fans in Boise are probably licking their chops at this week’s slate. Stanford has its toughest road test of the season @USC this week. Clemson will travel to a reeling Georgia Tech team that still has a ton of talent and has proven a bad matchup for Clemson in recent years. And Oklahoma State will have their third tough game in a row when Baylor and Robert Griffin III visit Stillwater. Does anyone realize just how tough Oklahoma State’s schedule is? By the end of the year they will have played @Texas, @Missouri, Baylor, Kansas State, and @Texas Tech in consecutive weeks without a bye.
BYU visits TCU on Friday night in what will be a big game for the MWC to save a lot of face. Also, Boise State needs TCU to win this game so that they can have a second year-end ranked team on their schedule (San Diego State and Tulsa have outside chances at being ranked but Boise State really needs TCU to be a quality opponent). And speaking of Boise State rooting interests, Georgia and Florida will face off in their annual rivalry game this week. Georgia will have a very tough time winning the SEC East if they lose and Florida will be eliminated from the division race if Georgia wins.
Oklahoma will visit Kansas State in a game that looked a lot bigger a week ago. Still, this game will play a big role in the Big XII race and could easily eliminate on of our 8 remaining undefeateds. It will also be very important because if Kansas State wins it will let us see if the voters finally start showing the Wildcats some respect. Tulsa also hosts SMU in what should be a pivotal C-USA West matchup. C-USA has a very strong top this year and could possibly end up with 3 ranked teams if Tulsa or SMU win out from here.
There are three huge games in the Big Ten this week, all of which have obvious BCS and Rose Bowl implications. At noon eastern, Michigan State travels to Nebraska in a Legends division matchup that could determine who plays in the Big Ten championship game. Then at 3:30 Illinois will visit Penn State in Happy Valley for what could determine who has the inside position to win the Leaders division. And at 8, Ohio State hosts Wisconsin in what could also be a pivotal Leaders division matchup. If Ohio State and Penn State both win, then Penn State will be in the Big Ten championship game so long as they do not lose 2 out of their last 3 games.
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