Well, with the effects of the Hurricane – as opposed to the Miami Hurricanes, which had its own effect on the erstwhile Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets – it took until Week 4, for all teams to have 2 games under their belt, and thus enough data to do the rankings. This has been an interesting season to date, marked by yet another round of “Notre Dame is back” bleats along with some strong evidence that Florida State might be for real. The continuing power of the SEC should surprise nobody, but the great start of the Pac 12 deserves a lot of consideration. Anyway, rankings below are as of yesterday’s action, and the methodology can be found here:

A few notes on what we see so far?

• Well, obviously it’s early, so the Strength of Schedule will start to iron itself out.  That said how is Stanford #1?  USC went 3-0 in its other games, Duke is 3-0 in its other games and San Jose State is 3-0 in its other games.  Alabama has better power metrics, but Arkansas 0-2 against other teams and Michigan’s loss to ND hurts their RPI.  Oregon State has the top RPI so far – like Stanford its opponents are unbeaten against the rest of their schedule to date.
• The model does not know the preseason Top 25, and it does not know how good LSU is on the eye test (I discount the uninspired result against Auburn, road game against a rival – that can happen).  Same with West Virginia or whatever.  Oregon only leapt up to #3 on the strength of a blowout of a team like Arizona that looked pretty good before this, as well as Arkansas State being solid since their opener.
• There is no BCS buster this year.  The Sun Belt and MAC have represented well.  In theory, Ohio COULD get to the Top 16, but really that is the only viable candidate.

Obviously, the BCS will be a vestige of Christmases past after the 2013 season – but we will still be doing it this season.  As such, we will still project:

• The BCS Title Game: Stanford vs Alabama, pretty straightforward
• With the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl losing its anchor teams, the top at-larges move up here.  Oregon slides into the Rose Bowl and Florida moves to the Sugar Bowl
• The rest of the bowl selection this year goes Fiesta, Sugar, Orange in priority.  Fiesta takes the best Big 12 team (Texas) and the top at-large left (Notre Dame).  The Sugar Bowl takes Kansas State as an at-large and the Orange Bowl, having the Big East champ available along with the ACC champ  will be Florida State vs Louisville
• So in summary – BCS Title Game: Stanford v Alabama, Rose Bowl: Michigan State v Oregon, Sugar Bowl: Florida v Kansas State, Fiesta Bowl: Texas v Notre Dame, Orange Bowl: Florida State v Louisville

If we’re going to the 2014 National Semifinal model – which has not been fully fleshed out, but knowing what we know – Stanford and Alabama would be the top 2 seeds.  Oregon would probably not be the #3 seed as Stanford would have beaten them for the Pac-12 North.  Texas, Florida and Notre Dame would also have semifinal claims – with league titles and RPI edges, Texas and Notre Dame would get the nods this week.