The Champ is Here | by Jay

The first BCS rankings are out. Here's how ND stacks up.

Coaches Poll: 8th
Harris Poll: 10th
Computers: 7th
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Overall: 8th

Seems reasonable to me.

Some other teams' rankings make no sense at all, however. A couple of doozies:

• West Virginia is ranked 4th by Harris and the Coaches, but only 14th by the computers.

• Texas is 5th by Harris & Coaches...15th according to the genius robots.

• 6-1 Clemson, having played and beaten nobody special (and losing to BC), is down at 16th for the computers. The fickle humans must have been impressed with their 63-9 demolition of Temple: they rank the Tigers at 12th, ahead of more deserving teams like Arkansas and Oregon. Boston College logically checks in at 20th.

• Auburn > Florida > Cal > Tennesse > Arkansas. Say whut? As one astute poster over on ND put it:

Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, California. I know you have to look at the whole season, but all these teams have one loss, and: Auburn beat Florida, Florida beat Tennessee, Tennessee beat Cal. I mean, it's right there.

I'd also point out that Arkansas beat Auburn and only has one loss (to a top-3 team) but I wouldn't expect the pollsters to actually start over with their rankings. Nope, it has to be "Well I had this team here, and they lost so I'll drop them 7 spots, and this team wasn't ranked and had a big win so I'll stick them around 18."

Now we see the violence (and prejudice) inherent in the system.