NCAA College Football BCS Standings Week 15

NCAA College Football BCS Standings Week 15

The SEC has 4 of the top 8 spots, but FSU and Ohio State are 1-2. Both Auburn and Ohio State have conference championship games next week, so it would seem that OSU should make the national championship game if they can defeat Michigan State, but that is not 100% certain.

Big gains: well, nobody really. UCLA went from 22 to 18; and Duke climbed from 24 to 20; all of which seems meaningless.

Big drops: Clemson tumbled from 6 to 13; Wisconsin from 15 to 21; Fresno State from 16 to 23.

Human/computer debates: the computers love Arizona State (#6 overall), the humans - not so much (#13); the computers like NIU (#10) much more than the humans do (#15 and #18 in the two polls); the computers give Louisville no respect at all (a perfect zero score), but the humans score them #16 and #17.

To watch:

(1) Northern Illinois must finish in the top 16 AND ahead of UCF to get an automatic bowl bid. As of now, they are 14th and UCF is 16th. NIU still has to play a conference championship game against Bowling Green. UCF has one more regular season game to play, which will pit them against SMU.

(2) UCF itself is still not guaranteed the AAC championship. If Louisville beats Cincinnati next week, UCF is in no matter what they do against SMU, because they beat Louisville face-to-face. If UCF wins, they win the conference outright, no matter what anyone else does. On the other hand, if Cincinnati wins and UCF loses, the bowl bid will go to the one with the higher BCS ranking. (That could be an extremely close race. Cincy is currently unranked, but a win over #19 Louisville would get them in the hunt, while #16 UCF would fall several places with a loss to SMU.)

(3) The top four teams in the Big 12 all play each other next week. If Oklahoma State beats Oklahoma, they are the champs, but if they lose, the conference will go to the winner of the Baylor/Texas game. In other words, although the Texas Longhorns are only rated #25 nationally, they still have a fairly good chance to win the conference.