As usual, the predictions are right over here. Let’s do this.

• Oregon and Auburn control their destinies. I had multiple people ask me Saturday if TCU had any chance of passing either of them, and while TCU got close this week after shellacking Utah, the answer is “no”. TCU plays a decent San Diego State team Saturday, but after that their only remaining game is in two weeks against a New Mexico outfit that is, by virtue of a turnover fueled win over Wyoming last weekend, probably only the second worst team in the country. That will hurt their SoS a bit. Honestly, what might happen is Auburn and Oregon switch places in the polls again, but either way TCU will be on the outside looking in. Unless one of them loses. 
  

  It’s all part of the plan….

• If Oregon loses, I would say it’s pretty certain TCU will get a shot. However, I agree with ESPN’s Brad Edwards that a 1-loss SEC champion Auburn team could very well vault its way back up into the top two. Auburn is currently #1 in all but 1 computer poll (and the highest and lowest polls are thrown out by the BCS), so a loss to, say, Alabama and then a title game win over Florida or South Carolina would probably get good enough to keep them at around #2 in the computers. If the humans, say, put them back up at #3, they could very well get in. At this point, I don’t think any other 1-loss teams have a shot, except for maybe LSU. (If Auburn loses Saturday to Georgia, I will go ahead and project LSU into the title game. There would be no other explanation for why Auburn would lose to UGA other than to set up LSU to win the SEC and vault its way into the BCS title game. Just no other reason.)
• Right now, I think Wisconsin has the easiest path to the Big Ten title, so I’m projecting them into the Rose. However, Ohio State has a good shot of being rewarded with a BCS berth provided they win out. In the Big 12, I’m now projecting Oklahoma State to win the conference. Note that’s highly subject to change pretty much whenever.
• Whither Boise State? They could very well be 12-0, no lower than #4 in the any of the polls the entire year, and be shut out of the BCS entirely. Only the top ranked non-automatic qualifying conference team is rewarded with an automatic bid to the BCS, so right now that looks like TCU. (Said team also gets a Rose Bowl bid if Oregon wins out.) Right now I think Boise is still in, but other folks doing this sort of thing have projected them out. But how bad will it look when a team they beat (Virginia Tech) is in a BCS bowl and they aren’t? Also, if I’m the Fiesta Bowl, I have to think that Boise is probably going to travel better than Stanford.
• I actually had a glut of qualifying teams this week, as you can see by the extra MAC and C-USA teams I have sitting around at the bottom. Thanks the NCAA scrapping the “winning records must be picked first” rule, a 6-6 Iowa State will almost certainly get an at-large bid before an 8-4 Toledo team.
• Some other notes: I could easily swap a few teams around here, like NC State and Florida State, for instance. Army, with a win over Kent State this weekend, could clink their first bowl berth since 1996. I hated to send Miami out to the Sun Bowl, but, well, someone’s got to go and I was running out of ACC teams to get picked in front of them. I still think Texas will make a bowl, just not a good one. Yes, Notre Dame’s not in. Hard to see them getting to 6-6 with games against Utah and USC left. And finally, I have no idea what the C-USA pecking order is. Those are almost guesses other than that I am desperately trying to avoid sending Southern Miss to the New Orleans Bowl yet again.

Better late than never, here’s this week’s bowl predictions. They’ve actually been up for awhile, so let’s see if I can remember what I was planning on writing.

• Auburn and Oregon continue to control their own destiny. The only thing #1 really gets is the first dibs on uniforms, which is probably a bigger deal to Oregon than it is to Auburn. Either way, as long as neither loses, they’re in good shape.
• Now, if they do lose, well, a lot more variables come into play. If Oregon loses, then no one really is sure what will happen. If Auburn loses, it depends on who they lose to. If they lose to Alabama the general consensus is that such a win plus the SEC title would propel a 1-loss Crimson Tide to the title game.
• In terms of TCU/Utah and Boise, there’s actually a chance one of them could be left out even if both finish in the top 5. Only the higher ranked of the two will get the auto-bid (likely to the Rose Bowl unless Oregon loses). The other will be at the mercy of the BCS at-large process. I don’t think the BCS bowls really want to risk the outrage if, say, a #4 Boise State is left out in the cold, but it could happen. (It has before.)
• In other news, I still have no idea who is going to win the Big 12. This week’s guess is Oklahoma over Nebraska in the Big 12 title game, allowing Mizzou to get a BCS berth. Note that this berth could also go to a Big Ten at-large, like, say, Michigan State.
• You may be interested to know that I have Michigan and Texas playing each other in the Texas Bowl.
• I have one extra team this week, but it’s still kind of dicey. It mostly depends on how the mid-majors shake out, and at this point in the season I still don’t really have enough data to comb through and figure out which of those teams will reach the 6-win threshold. (See, for instance, the Sun Belt, where many teams enter conference play below .500 but then gradually claw their way up to 6-6.) As the season goes on, this gets much easier though.
• Florida and GT in the Music City Bowl? I don’t care that they lost to Mississippi State and can’t offense their way out of a paper bag, I’d still say we’re like a three touchdown underdog.
• Also, Hawaii is indeed the first confirmed team in a bowl game.

Well, it’s week two of bowl prediction season and I still have no solid idea of what’s going on here. I’ll try to do some analysis, though. Let’s try some bullet points, but first here’s a link to the predictions:

• Auburn and Oregon are the only two teams that control their BCS destiny at this point. If they both win out, they’re in. I feel pretty good about this one. If either of them loses, it’ll be chaos.
• And even then, it’s not entirely clear what will happen behind Auburn and Oregon. I have no earthly idea who is going to win the Big 12. Right now I would say it will be Oklahoma, Nebraska, or Missouri. Mizzou plays Nebraska this weekend so that will at least let me figure out the likely divisional winners. Even then, I’m not sure Mizzou could beat OU twice. Right now, however, I am projecting the Tigers as the Big 12 champs.
• As a reminder, the BCS bowls pick in this order: the bowls that lost teams to the championship game get to pick replacements first, followed by the rest of the bowls in reverse order (so this year, the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, and then Rose). Also, a mid-major team will almost certainly end up in the Rose. I think the TCU/Utah winner will jump Boise State in the BCS eventually, so that’s why I put them there.
• The rest I feel okay about. This week I actually have extra teams, as each week of conference play also makes it easier to evaluate the non-BCS conferences. Still, though, I’m nervous about having Southern Miss and Troy in the New Orleans Bowl again, but at this point it’s too early to get concrete news on which way the bowls are leaning. Though I did read somewhere Notre Dame might not even get invited to the Champs Sports Bowl (in place of the Big East runner-up), but we’ll see.
• Oh, speaking of the Big East, I’m projecting a three-way tie thanks to Syracuse upsetting West Virginia last weekend. It seemed like the most rational prediction at this point.
• As much as I hate to admit this, I’d actually like to see Georgia and Clemson play each other. That’s a pretty longstanding rivalry that should be played every year but isn’t.

Anyway, this weekend holds even more intriguing matchups that will probably change everything again. So, until next time…

Ordinarily, I use the first post of the year to go through my process and my thoughts on the individual bowls.

I won’t do that here, though, for two reasons.
1. I am really busy right now.
2. I have no idea what is going on.

Hopefully I’ll have something more substantive for week 2. In the meantime, enjoy. Oh, and yes, I am short a team. That could well happen this year!