BCS musings and fun facts: it’s not magic, or is it?
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Kids, you should not fear the first release of the Bowl Championship Series standings on Sunday.
Like trigonometry, the BCS can be fun if you just give it a chance and have the right teacher.
Instead of killing you with homework this early in the BCS season, we’ll start you out with an easy open-URL quiz to reacquaint you with the often-misunderstood rankings system that chooses the national title participants for college football. Please click your mouses to BCS media guide.
1: Which school has been ranked No. 1 the most weeks in the BCS standings?
2: Which school debuted at No. 1 in the first BCS standings on Oct. 26, 1998, but hasn’t been No. 1 since?
3: Which school has been ranked No.1 for the most consecutive weeks?
4: How many schools that debuted at No.1 in the first standings went on to win the national title that year?
Answers and explanations:
1: Oklahoma has 16 times been ranked No. 1 in the BCS standings, followed by USC and Ohio State at 15. Florida State and Miami have been first seven times. Interestingly, Oklahoma has lost its last four BCS bowl games and has won only one BCS title, in 2000.
The team that has gotten the most bang for BCS buck is Louisiana State, which has won two national titles despite having spent only two weeks at the No.1 position during the regular season. In 2003, LSU finished second behind Oklahoma and beat the Sooners and last year LSU finished second behind Ohio State and beat the Buckeyes.
2: That would be our one-hit wonder UCLA Bruins, who were the first No. 1 team in BCS history. UCLA fell behind Ohio State the next week and has never returned to the top.
3: It doesn’t compare with Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, but Ohio State once spent 12 straight weeks at No. 1 in a stretch that began Oct. 15 of 2006 and ended on Nov. 11 last year following a home loss to Illinois. Remarkably, though, the Buckeyes would climb back to No.1 in the final BCS standings. USC, at nine weeks, owns the second-longest streak at No.1.
4. The only schools that started No. 1 and ended up winning the national title were Florida State in 1999 and USC in 2004.
See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Next week, we’ll try to get rankings guru Jeff Sagarin as a quest speaker to explain his EL0-CHESS methodology. If he’s not available, we’ll shoot for Anderson & Hester. If they’re not available, how about Penn & Teller?
-- Chris Dufresne
