College football rankings, Week 8: Florida tops Oregon in debut BCS standings

Alabama’s still No. 1 in the Week 8 BlogPoll, using a 42-10 win over Missouri to make up for ground lost during their Week 6 bye. And the Crimson Tide doesn’t have West Virginia to watch out for anymore, not after Texas Tech’s 49-14 obliteration of the Mountaineers.

West Virginia was No. 4 in the Week 7 BlogPoll, and earned one first-place vote; now, the ‘Eers are No. 17, falling 13 spots after their belly flop in Lubbock, and appear no higher than No. 9 on any ballot.

Wow, Florida came out ahead of Oregon for No. 2 in this season’s first official BCS standings.

Not all that shocking, and not a sign that the Ducks are the victims of injustice. In reality the exact positions of the top few teams bear very little consequence, since the season isn’t even halfway over. The race to the top was covered in Sunday’s BCS projections, where each of the top 15 teams were pegged at no more than 1 spot off the actual rankings.

The first BCS standings were released Sunday night. Here at “Bomani & Jones,” we figured we’d give you our own BCS Standings. Why not? It’ll mean just as much as what we’ve got.

C’mon. We get television shows, excitement and complaints for the first standings, even though they’re missing a very important component -- everything. Maybe not everything, but how about all the important games that make the computer formulas worth paying attention to? Oh, and let’s not forget those votes that’ll come in the final poll that have nothing to do with what happens now. Right, the ones that come in from pollsters who are trying to fix the results to be what they think they should be, based on some principle that’s useless to the BCS. Because, yanno, the BCS has no principles at all.

Both of the top two teams have potentially challenging road games up next, with Bama heading to Knoxville for the Third Saturday in October and Oregon getting Arizona State on the road this Thursday night. As always, mayhem looms, whether it arrives via these games or otherwise.

Elsewhere, K-State makes its highest BCS showing since the system’s second year in 1999, while Notre Dame hasn’t been ranked this high since November of 2006. And how about the Big East putting in three while the Big Ten gets shut out?

Alabama is still No. 1 in the Harris Interactive Poll after a dominating win over Missouri. The Tide collected 110 out of 115 first place votes, with the other five going to No. 2 Oregon. Alabama has a healthy lead atop the poll with 2,870 points, ahead of Oregon’s 2,758, and then there is a big drop off.

While Alabama and Oregon are both in the same spots as last week, the rest of the top five isn’t. Losses by South Carolina and West Virginia shook things up and now Florida, Kansas St. and Notre Dame make up the rest of the top five.

Alabama’s bye last week gave the college football world a chance to assess the rest of the field in the running for a national championship. This week, the Crimson Tide reminded everyone why they’re No. 1 in all the rankings.

Alabama threw a 21-0 haymaker at Missouri in the first quarter of what turned into a 42-10 rout, and did it like this: Eddie Lacy raced 73 yards to the end zone on the first offensive play of the game; the Tide’s defense forced a three-and-out, picked off a pass, and allowed 36 yards in the period; Alabama blocked a punt; the Tide rolled up 199 yards and three rushing touchdowns on just 16 plays.

The Kansas State Wildcats are in at No. 4, having stayed undefeated, while Big 12 favorites such as Texas and West Virginia have suffered losses in the previous weeks, and are right in the thick of things at the season’s midway mark.

Alabama collects all 60 of the AP Poll’s first-place votes, while Oregon sits 64 points behind the Tide in second place.

The Kansas State Wildcats, No. 5 last week, surge into the No. 3 spot, just ahead of both the Irish and Gators.

Alabama enjoys unanimous support from the poll’s voters, collecting all 59 available first-place votes this week.

The first edition of the 2012 BCS rankings is to be released Sunday night, ranking the nation’s college football teams for selection to the BCS Championship Game. The BCS rankings are based on two human polls -- the USA Today Coaches’ Poll and the Harris Poll -- and six computer rankings. A weighted formula based on these polls determines who plays for the National Championship.

Both human and computer polls are given specific criteria to consider in ranking the teams. In particular, the voters and computers are required to disregard margin of victory. Jeff Sagarin of USA Today administers one of the computer rankings that makes up the BCS, but Sagarin’s rankings include margin of victory. Therefore, Sagarin generates a second poll, known as ELO-CHESS, that removes margin of victory from the calculation.

Oregon’s in line to get another shot at a team from the state of Alabama in a BCS National Championship, with the Ducks and the Tide still looking like the country’s best two national title candidates.

This week’s complete bowl projections (asterisks for teams filling the spots of conferences that couldn’t fill all of their own), with my explanation below:

1. Alabama. The usual ultraviolence: a 42-10 home invasion of Missouri, an utter disregard for human life, and cruelty so abhorrent the weather attempted to intervene with a lightning delay.

2. Oregon. Bye week. Chip Kelly caught up on fives seasons of Breaking Bad in seven hours.

Update: Complete BCS standings for Week 8 now available right here.

Update No. 2: BCS standings beyond the Top 25.