Parsing the Polls...

The first edition of this year's BCS standings were released during Fox's NFL Football postgame today. (I was incorrect in stating that the BCS standings are released on Tuesdays in an earlier post. My bad. Though I still don't understand the rationale in releasing the standings on a Sunday.)

No point in discussing the rankings at this point, as there is a lot of football yet to be played. And, in a season where surprises abound, there is no one who can say with any degree of certainty what the remainder of the season holds. Of course, that does little to dissuade people from doing exactly that. To recap, the debate has moved from the possibility of having three undefeated and dominant teams (USC, LSU, and Oklahoma), to the emergence of non-traditional powers, and now to the relative merit of USF and BC to be ranked in the top three. I've read and heard multiple arguments about the remaining schedules of Ohio State, USF, BC, LSU, Oklahoma, etc, etc, and the paucity of tough opponents and the likelihood of those teams running the table, agitating the masses and necessitating the need for a playoff. While a loss for these teams might be unexpected, did anyone expect USC to lose to Stanford, Cal to lose to Oregon State, or LSU to lose to Kentucky? So, before everyone gets their respective nuts in a twist, watch and enjoy the games remaining this season.

By the way, since Fox spent so much money for the right to televise the BCS bowls, as well as be the first to release the BCS standings each week, shouldn't they bring in some people who are capable of talking about those rankings? Instead, we're subjected to listening to Charles Davis, Fox's lead college football analyst, talk about the lack of respect for USF amongst the human voters. Isn't USF ranked #2 in the AP and #3 in the USA Today and Harris polls, all of whom are comprised of human voters? How is that disrespect? We were also exposed to the expert analysis of Curt Menefee, who, while running down the list of teams ranked 11-20, noted that #14 USC's title hopes were extinguished based on their ranking, only to be immediately contradicted by Charles Davis and other members of the team, who noted (correctly) that USC has a schedule populated by three teams that are ranked above them in the BCS in Cal, Arizona State, and Oregon. While this crew may do a decent job in talking about the NFL, they were brutal to listen to when it came to talking about college football. Save us from Jimmy Johnson's assertions that Oregon should be #1 (didn't they lose to the same Cal team that just went down to Oregon State due to turning the ball over THREE times late in the 4th quarter?) and his previous lambasting of Alabama head coach Nick Saban for his criticism of USF and their academic standards. With Fox's resources, I'm sure that they could throw it to a different team to discuss and needlessly parse the new BCS standings each week.