November 15, 2009

Mike Huguenin
Rivals.com College Football

The top three teams in the BCS standings remained the same, and No. 4 TCU strengthened its lead over No. 5 Cincinnati.

Florida remains No. 1, Alabama No. 2 and Texas No. 3. The Gators and Crimson Tide meet Dec. 5 in the SEC championship game in what should be a de facto national semifinal. Texas leads the Big 12 South race and will be in the national title game if it wins out.

But TCU fortifying its position is the big news this week. If Texas were to lose, the No. 4 team in the BCS would benefit.

One potential sticking point: TCU's final two games are against five-win Wyoming and winless New Mexico. Cincinnati's final two games are against three-win Illinois and Pittsburgh, which is ninth in the BCS this week. Cincy's advantage in the computer rankings conceivably will grow, meaning the polls ultimately could prove to be the deciding factor in whether TCU remains ahead of Cincinnati.

Texas, which was fifth in the computers last week, moved up to fourth after beating Baylor, nudging TCU to fifth.

Boise State remained sixth and Georgia Tech seventh in the BCS standings. Tech clinched the ACC Coastal Division title by routing Duke, and in the process, the one-loss Yellow Jackets moved ahead of unbeaten Boise State in the computer polls. Tech is sixth this week, an improvement of one spot. Boise State, which beat Idaho, dropped from sixth to seventh in the computers.

TCU remains the highest-ranked team from a non-Big Six league. A non-Big Six team is guaranteed a BCS spot in two ways. One is if it finishes in the top 12; the other is if it is ranked in the top 16 and its ranking is higher than that of a conference champion with an automatic berth. This week, the Horned Frogs are higher than any team from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten and Pac-10.

Under BCS rules, only one non-Big Six team is guaranteed a spot if it meets the criteria. Any others would be at-large candidates. At-large candidates must have at least nine victories and finish in the top 14 in the final BCS standings.

TCU was .0040 points ahead of Cincinnati last week and is .0149 ahead of the Bearcats this week. Boise State is another .0586 behind Cincinnati; the Broncos trailed the Bearcats by .0454 last week. In addition, Boise State's lead over Georgia Tech has shrunk to .0234 this week after being at .0574 last week.

No. 8 LSU, No. 9 Pitt and No. 10 Ohio State round out the top 10.

The three components of the BCS standings are the coaches' poll; the Harris poll, voted on by media members and by former players, coaches and administrators; and six computers. Each of the components counts one-third. The best and worst computer rankings are thrown out, and the sum total of the remaining four is divided by 100 (the maximum possible points) to come up with the BCS' computer rankings percentage.

While strength of schedule isn't a BCS component, all six computers have a strength-of-schedule factor in their rankings.

The final BCS standings will be released Dec. 6. Teams first and second in the final standings meet in the BCS National Championship Game on Jan. 7 in Pasadena, Calif.

Some other items of interest from the first set of standings:

Florida is No. 1 in three computers and Alabama No. 1 in three computers. Florida is No. 2 in three computers, Cincinnati is No. 2 in two computers and Alabama is No. 2 in one computer.

Though the Pac-10 has the most teams in the top 25 with five, Oregon is the highest-ranked Pac-10 team, at No. 11.

Iowa is 13th and Penn State 14th in the BCS, keeping them alive for at-large bids. The Nittany Lions are getting a huge boost from the human polls, ranking 12th in both. They are 21st in the computers, and two of them - the Sagarin ratings and the Wolfe ratings - don't have the Nittany Lions in the top 25; another, the Massey system, has them 25th. Penn State is the only team in the BCS top 21 that is unranked by two computers.

Of the teams in the BCS top 10, Ohio State has the widest computer ranges. The Buckeyes' highest computer ranking is ninth, in the Colley Matrix. But Sagarin has them 18th. The next-highest range is for No. 9 Pitt, at five (10th in four computers and 15th in another).

The Sagarin ratings don't rank four of the BCS top 25: Penn State, No. 16 Wisconsin, No. 22 BYU and No. 24 Houston. In addition, Sagarin doesn't think too highly of No. 12 Oklahoma State, ranking the Cowboys 24th. The Cowboys are 13th in the Billingsley rankings.

The Pac-10 has five teams in the top 25, followed by the ACC and Big Ten with four each, the Mountain West and SEC with three each, the Big East and Big 12 with two each and Conference USA and the WAC with one each.

No. 17 Stanford, No. 23 Clemson and No. 25 California moved into the top 25. Arizona (which had been 17th), USF (24th) and West Virginia (25th) dropped out after losses.

BCS Standings

Mike Huguenin is the college sports editor for Rivals.com. He can be reached at mhuguenin@rivals.com.