BCS Top 5
Alabama - Next four games: at Tenn., No. 15 Miss. State, at No. 6 LSU, No. 20 Texas A&M
Florida - Gators have risen quickly. Can they stay?
Oregon - Ducks rolling up big numbers out in Pac-10.
Kansas State - Tough test at W. Virginia this week, but rest of schedule is manageable.
Notre Dame - The BCS’s dream date still must play at Oklahoma and USC.
Before we shoot off too many fireworks over Florida bubbling up at No. 2 in the initial BCS rankings, let’s talk a moment about South Florida.
The Bulls were in their 11th year of college competition in 2007 when lightning struck with an upset win over West Virginia and an outlandish 64-12 blowout of Central Florida. Before you could say “flavor of the week,” the first BCS poll of the season came out with South Florida at No. 2, right behind regal Ohio State.
There was a fair amount of shock around the country, followed by outrage, and then, rather quickly, resolution.
Consecutive losses to Rutgers, UConn and Cincinnati sent the Bulls tumbling out of the rankings altogether, which serves as a warning that the BCS’ flashy, week-to-week snapshots are for entertainment purposes only.
It all comes down to winning all your games, which is the only real way for the Gators to guarantee a spot in the BCS title game on Jan. 7 at Sun Life Stadium.
There is another, shakier route, one that comes courtesy of Florida’s membership in the highly-favored SEC. Say the Gators were to lose one game to the right opponent, either South Carolina this Saturday or Florida State on Thanksgiving weekend. That would knock them down the BCS ladder a bit, but maybe not so far that an epic upset win over No. 1 Alabama in the SEC Championship Game wouldn’t provide the needed edge over any other one-loss team.
Rather than ramble through all the other scenarios, including the ultimate wild card of Notre Dame, why not just wait and see if the Gators are good enough to warrant all this interest? Just seven weeks ago they were struggling to put Bowling Green away in the season opener. It’s almost comical trying to predict where they’ll be seven weeks from now.
Gator coach Will Muschamp seems to be getting that message across, at least on the surface.
Asked Monday what he thinks of Florida’s first-glance No. 2 BCS ranking, defensive tackle Omar Hunter said, “It’s whatever. That’s not going to get you to Atlanta (the SEC title game) or to the national championship. We’ve still got a lot more games to play, and that’s where we’re at right now.”
It’s whatever. Try selling that on a T-shirt, especially in Oregon, where players and fans are miffed over the unbeaten Ducks coming in a close third in the initial BCS release.
The BCS system, a combination of human polls and computer power rankings, shuffles contenders crazily for two long months. The trick is to start high enough on the list to have a chance at making the final national championship pairing. After that, it’s a matter of running off a string of impressive wins and hoping that everybody else gets out of the way.
The Gators, for instance, started at No. 6 in the initial mid-October BCS poll of 2006 and went on to win the national title. It was an even tougher climb to the 2008 national championship, with the Gators debuting at No. 10 on the opening BCS list.
No BCS championship team has ever started lower than No. 12 in the initial ranking. That was LSU in 2003, back when Jimbo Fisher was the Tigers’ offensive coordinator and Nick Saban was their head coach.
Should any of these basic rules of engagement prove confusing or even unintelligible, a new four-team national championship format is coming for the 2014 season. It will choose the semifinalists based on the instincts, observations and preferences of a selection committee, which most likely will be comprised of current and retired athletic administrators from the various schools and conferences.
What possibly could go wrong with that, right?
Bottom line, the Gators are in as strong a position as they could be right now under a system that has worked for them in the past. All the computer-strength data of today seems to double for SEC teams, while future selection committees may lean strongly toward choosing four semifinalists from four different leagues.
I’m not convinced that Florida can keep it going, but there is one intriguing precedent.
Urban Meyer’s second season as Gator coach brought a national title, and much sooner than anyone expected. Muschamp is in his second year at Florida now, and with a roster too young and unproven to predict greatness. Can’t really say that he’s sneaking up on something, not with the Gators starting out at No. 2, but at this point it sort of feels that way.
So begins the BCS demolition derby. Until somebody beats Alabama, it’s all window-dressing anyway.
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