BCS lesson for this Saturday

You've probably taken Psychology 111, Calculus 115 or Spanish 101. Forget everything you learned in any of those classes. None of that information is going to help you this Saturday.

Football season doesn't halt when Michigan has a bye. In fact, this may be the most important weekend of college football so far this season.

Michigan is virtually out of the bowl championship series race at the moment. The rankings were released this past Monday and the Wolverines were nowhere in the top 15.

That's what an AP ranking of 15, two losses and nonconference opponents such as Bowling Green and Rice will do to a team.

Michigan's only hope right now is to pray to the BCS Gods that Ohio State beats Purdue at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday (the only time - I hope - that anyone will be rooting for the Buckeyes).

But in order to understand the full importance of this game plus the full importance of the game I'm sure all of you will be tuning in for before that one - Nebraska at Oklahoma - one needs to take BCS logic 101.

I know what your thinking, "Why should I be listening to her, she can't make picks against the spread to save her life?"

For those of you who think I'm insulting your football knowledge by the following explanation, I apologize.

This is for those who will turn on the television Saturday and wonder how in the world some random football analyst came up with the No. 1 and No. 2 rankings that surround the day's highlighted matchup.

I think the BCS rankings mean very little since Wisconsin still ended up in the Rose Bowl as the Big Ten champion the last two years. But the rankings have picked the national champion the last two years, and the way things are going this season, it very well may happen again. All depending on what happens Saturday.

This lesson will be handier Saturday than differentiating binomial equations, believe me. So put down those textbooks and stop listening to lecture. This is an important lesson that you don't want to miss.

THE BCS BOWLS: Six of the eight spots in the four bowl championship games will be determined by conference champions.

The Rose Bowl, like always, will host the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions this year. Since neither conference will boast a No. 1 or No. 2 team, the tradition will once again stay intact.

All the rest of the major conferences will get a spot in one of the three remaining BCS bowls, the Fiesta, Sugar or the national championship game, the Orange Bowl.

This leaves two wild card spots for other teams that finish in the top 10 of the BCS standings.

THE EQUATION: Four things are factored together to figure out these BCS rankings.

n The first factor is position in the polls. The rankings calculate the average standing of each team in the Associated Press and the USA Today/ESPN polls.

n The second component is an average of eight computer rankings. These include three used in 1998 and five that were added last year. The seven highest computer rankings are averaged and the lowest is disregarded.

n The third item in the BCS rankings is strength of schedule. The strength of a team's schedule is determined by evaluating the win/loss records of a team's opponents and the win/loss records of the teams' opponents' opponents.

Sound confusing? It gets worse.

The formula is weighed by two-thirds for the opponents' record and one-third for the opponents' opponents' record.

Then once the schedule strength is calculated it is divided by 25 to get a figure.

n The final component is a team's losses. Each loss a team accumulates during the season equals one point. So Michigan currently has two points in this catergory.

The final standings are decided by adding these four catergories together and the team with the lowest point total will be No. 1 in the BCS standings.

The top two teams in these standings at the end of the season will compete in the Orange Bowl.

Hopefully your lecture is now over and you fully understand how the BCS rankings work. If not, there's always next season.

- Stephanie Offen can be reached at soffen@umich.edu

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Offen