Notre Dame, USC Enjoy High Times

In news that may or may not be fit to print, Notre Dame and USC premiered at No. 1 and No. 2 in the first New York Times college football computer rankings released Monday.

Does this mean Notre Dame and USC are going to meet for the national title?

Well, no. That’s all but impossible, given that the teams play against each other in the regular season Nov. 30.

Does this mean USC has the inside track to snag one of two bowl championship series title-game spots?

That’s another big fat “No!”

Do the New York Times rankings mean anything?

Frankly, they will mean more on Nov. 30 than Sept. 30, and even then, not that much.

The New York Times’ is only one of seven computers being used in this year’s BCS rankings, a four-pronged ratings system used to determine which teams will play in the national title game Jan. 3 in the Fiesta Bowl.

USC’s splendid position in the first New York Times’ rankings represents only a glimpse of a photograph that is not close to being developed.

“I will say this 5,000 times,” John Paquette, Big East Conference associate commissioner and BCS spokesman, said Monday, “The computer is only 25% of the formula and we’re using seven computers.”

So, USC fans, you do the math.

The four BCS formula parts include poll average, losses, strength of schedule and computer average, plus a quality-win bonus deduction for victories over teams that finish in the top 10.

In the computer component, a school’s worst ranking is discarded, the point total coming from the average of the six others.

The schools with the two lowest cumulative point totals in the final BCS standings advance to the title game.

The first BCS standings will not be released until Oct. 21, primarily because the BCS commissioners think it takes more than four games to get accurate readings in the often wildly fluctuating computers.

If you believed the New York Times, the Oklahoma-Texas game Oct. 12, possibly the game of the year in college football, would be a wire rewrite match-up between No. 11 and No. 29.

Also, how does the New York Times explain 4-0 Kansas State being 15 spots behind USC, a team it defeated?

USC Coach Pete Carroll, for one, can’t explain it.

“They beat us. They ought to be ahead of us,” he said.

These discrepancies are one reason why some BCS computer operators, such as Peter Wolfe in Los Angeles, have not yet begun publishing weekly rankings.

Here’s how crazy early-season computer rankings can get: Among other BCS computer rankings being published, USC ranks 33rd in Richard Billingsley and 13th in the Colley Matrix.

Far more important than the computers in the BCS system are poll average and losses. The BCS commissioners’ off-season decision to eliminate margin of victory from the computer component has shifted more power to the writers’ and coaches’ polls.

It is all but impossible for a school to finish first or second in the final BCS rankings without finishing fourth or better in the poll component.

This week, USC is ranked 18th in the Associated Press poll and 20th in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll, giving the Trojans a No. 19 poll average.

In other words, USC has a lot of rungs left to climb.

Also, nothing hurts more in the BCS than a defeat, and USC’s loss at Kansas State has already cost the Trojans a full BCS point.

Each BCS computer has its own formula for determining team strength. The New York Times’ computer has its own wrinkles, one of which is the way it calculates a ranked school’s opponents’ won-lost record. For instance, Notre Dame’s victories over Maryland, Michigan, Purdue and Michigan State are not counted against those schools for poll purposes.

Confused?

Listen to this early-season appraisal from BCS rankings man Jeff Sagarin, who had USC at No. 4 last week.

“Suppose there are 20 ‘key’ games left to be played amongst the elite teams,” Sagarin responded in an e-mail query. “And suppose each game could be considered a coin flip. Well that means there are roughly 2 to the 20th power ways the elite teams can finish with each other. And 2 to the 20th power is 1,048,576, which is pretty large.”

Bottom line?

It’s early.

Wait until November.

Times staff writer Gary Klein contributed to this report.

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*--* Rank Polls Where USC and Notre Dame rank in a few polls/rankings this week: Poll/Computer USC ND AP top 25 (poll) 18 9 ESPN/USA Today (poll) 20 9 N.Y. Times (computer) 2 1 Jeff Sagarin (computer) 3 10 Colley Matrix (computer) 13 1 Richard Billingsley (computer) 33 9

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