Most national college football powers have always fattened up their nonconference schedules with marshmallows and cream puffs, the perfect recipe for a fat record to attract pollsters.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma quietly schedules the likes of Oregon, Texas Christian, Brigham Young and Miami.
That kind of scheduling has paid off. The Sooners stand atop the first Bowl Championship Series standings of the season.
The BCS standings primarily determine the top two teams for the national championship game and include three equal parts: the USA Today coaches poll, the Harris Poll (made up of seasoned college football observers) and six computer polls.
Oklahoma is only fourth in the Harris Poll and third in the coaches poll but earned the top overall spot, thanks to ranking first in the computers. The Sooners (6-0) have already defeated Florida State, Air Force and Cincinnati in nonconference play, plus archrival Texas.
“We’re going up to play a 6-0 team at Missouri, and they’re not handing anything out right now,” Sooners coach Bob Stoops told The Associated Press on Sunday. “It means absolutely nothing.”
Following Oklahoma are Oregon, Boise State, Auburn and TCU. In last week’s mock projections, Boise State stood No. 1 and Oklahoma No. 4. The Broncos appeared to be on their way to being No. 1 as they throttled San Jose State on the road 48-0. Plus, Ohio State and Nebraska, both in the top five in last week’s coaches polls, lost.
But San Jose State is so low in the computer rankings, merely playing the Spartans sent Boise State plummeting from second in the computers to seventh.
Oklahoma beat Iowa State 52-0.
“Iowa State was about 40th going into that game,” said BCS analyst Jerry Palm of . “San Jose State was one of the 20 worst teams in (Division) I-A. It was only a matter of time.”
Karl Benson of the Denver area-based Western Athletic Conference wasn’t happy Boise State dropped after a 48-0 win.
“The system is in dire need of reform,” the WAC commissioner said. “There’ve been times when Boise State has been rewarded by the computers and obviously this is a time they haven’t. But to depend on computers to rank teams and determine a potential national champion is subject to debate and subject to controversy, and we’re seeing it right now.”
Boise State coach Chris Petersen is about the only Broncos follower who doesn’t take the BCS too seriously. The Broncos’ previous highest ranking was fourth last year. By the time they finished the weak WAC schedule undefeated, they had dropped to sixth.
“It will mean something Dec. 6th,” Petersen told The Associated Press. “Every week something happens, someone else goes down. It doesn’t mean anything right now to us. It means something to everybody else out there.”
Two Mountain West Conference schools, TCU and Utah, are fifth and ninth, respectively — well above the No. 14 water mark for automatic qualification to one of the five lucrative BCS bowls.
“They have about the same shot as Boise,” Palm said. “They need to get Boise out of the way. To be honest, the Mountain West and the WAC are about the same this year. The difference is the Mountain West has two really good teams and the WAC doesn’t. But if you see how they performed out of conference, they’re about the same.”
Alabama, the defending national champion, is the highest-ranked one-loss team at eighth. It can eliminate two teams ahead of it when it visits No. 6 Louisiana State on Nov. 6 and hosts Auburn on Nov. 26.
However, Alabama won’t finish ahead of any undefeated major conference teams. It will have an eye on Oklahoma when it visits No. 11 Missouri on Saturday, then No. 14 Oklahoma State on Nov. 27. Also, Oregon visits Southern California on Oct. 30 but No. 18 Arizona is the only BCS-ranked team left on its schedule.
An interesting dark horse is No. 15 Iowa. The Hawkeyes face No. 13 Wisconsin, No. 7 Michigan State and No. 10 Ohio State — all at home — and could shoot up the rankings if they run the table and teams above them lose.
The important thing to know is this: It’s very early.
“I always tell people that when you look at the rankings in October, you need to look at the poll position,” Palm said. “That’s what drives this thing. The computers will eventually catch up by the end of the year. But right now, computers have only six or seven games worth of data on these teams.”
Fab five
The top five teams in the first BCS standings of the season (complete standings, 8BB):
Rk. Team Rec.
1. Oklahoma 6-0
2. Oregon 6-0
3. Boise State 6-0
4. Auburn 7-0
5. Texas Christian 7-0
