By Blair Kerkhoff, The Kansas City Star –
The first BCS standings will be unveiled Sunday, and by late evening the system should be thoroughly trashed, social media blown up with the venom of fans defending teams not ranked in the top two, and projections of chaos over the second half of the season.
Monday morning, latest.
Added to this year’s angst is the knowledge that the BCS process comes with an end date. We get it this year and next, and then it’s on to a four-team playoff that should satisfy the most vocal fans for what, two years?
Until then, the BCS’ structure with the Harris and USA Today polls plus the average of six computer rankings will spit out a top 25, of which only the top two matter.
And when history is considered, at least one of those top two on Sunday won’t matter in the end.
Only once in the 14-year history of the BCS standings have the teams that opened as 1-2 remained in those spots the rest of the season — Southern California and Texas in 2005 — and they gave us a memorable title bout.
Last year marked the second time the opening 1-2 teams played in the title game, but although LSU sank its teeth into the top spot and never unclenched, Alabama dropped from No. 2 for two weeks. The Crimson Tide worked its way back into the second spot but not without a bit of controversy.
Recall that Alabama had lost to LSU in the regular season. But that outcome was deemed a lesser offense than those of other one-loss contenders Oklahoma State and Stanford.
The Tide answered the doubters by clubbing the Tigers 21-0 at the Superdome.
Otherwise, count on movement in the BCS standings over eight weeks. It might be as crazy as 2007, when a different 1-2 emerged over each of the final six weeks.
Heading into this weekend, 16 teams are undefeated, but because the BCS title has been an exclusive domain of power conferences — four conferences have produced the finalists for the last 10 years — it’s smart money to project that the national-title game will match teams from the SEC, Big 12, Pac-12 or Notre Dame.
So, the schools with the best shot of landing in the title game if multiple teams run the table are four from the SEC (Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and Mississippi State), two in the Big 12 (Kansas State, West Virginia) and Pac-12 (Oregon, Oregon State). Plus Notre Dame.
Last year, only LSU was undefeated. In 2010, three teams were, but one was TCU from the Mountain West, making it easy to identify Auburn and Oregon as the finalists. Five ran the table in 2009, but Alabama-Texas was a no-brainer matchup for the championship.
Could this be a year like 2004, when three of the major conferences produced an undefeated team and one — Auburn — was left shivering in the cold?
It’s not impossible to see a scenario where Alabama, Oregon, the Kansas State-West Virginia winner and Notre Dame stand perfect at the season’s end.
Oh, the griping you’ll hear when two of them cannot play for the national championship and a four-team playoff sits just over the horizon.
Most teams have more than a half-season remaining, and only Oregon and South Carolina are 6-0 among the top contenders. The rest have played five games. There are plenty of opportunities for one-loss teams to return to the hunt. The door isn’t closed on LSU, Florida State, Southern California, Georgia or the Oklahoma-Texas winner.
The two BCS projected standings that I’ve seen agreed on this top six: Alabama, Oregon, South Carolina, West Virginia, Florida and Notre Dame.
And here’s another piece of BCS trivia to keep in mind Sunday: Of the 28 teams that have appeared in the BCS national-title game, only two were ranked lower than sixth when the first poll was unveiled.
Still, anything can happen. Five years ago, Kansas got to mid-November ranked second and was on course to play in the title game. Then the Jayhawks lost to Missouri, and had the season ended that week, the title game would have been Mizzou-West Virginia.
All we know for sure this fall is that the griping will begin Sunday.
