Auburn Tigers and the BCS Rankings: Does Oregon Deserve To Outrank Auburn?

Its not often that you beat a decent team by almost three touchdowns and suffer a drop in ranking. 

Yet this is exactly what happened to Auburn in the recently-released BCS rankings. Auburn has dropped to No. 2, while Oregon is the new No. 1.  

Computer generated rankings aside, Oregon's No. 1 ranking seems undeserved. 

Oregon whipped the USC Trojans at the Coliseum 53-32, while on the other side of the country Auburn made short work of a similarly talented Ole Miss team to the tune of 51-31, a score that could have been worse had AU decided to keep the first team in on defense. Admittedly, the USC defense is a little better than that of Ole Miss, but that still doesn't warrant a drop in ranking.

Moreover, Oregon has not had a tougher schedule that Auburn. Of all the teams Oregon has played, only Stanford is currently ranked (USC was ranked 24th until today), and Stanford is 40th in the country in total defense.

By contrast, of all the teams Auburn has played, four are currently ranked (Mississippi State, LSU, Arkansas, and South Carolina).  Combining the total defensive stats for these four teams, the average total defensive rank between them is 23rd. 

Maybe Oregon has a slight edge on offense, but the Auburn offense has been unstoppable in every game except Mississippi State, who has a better defense than any team in the Pac-10, and was also Newton's first ever SEC away game in a cowbell-filled and hostile environment.  

No doubt Oregon is a very good team, but it just hasn't been tested by the kinds of defenses Auburn has faced.

I don't know much about how the BCS rankings technically work, but dropping Auburn down to No. 2 after a comprehensive win does not seem reasonable.  On the bright side, in the long term, as long as Auburn keeps winning, it should still reach the title game. 

I am an SEC fan, so this might sound like a homer statement, but a one-loss SEC team still deserves to be in the national championship.  With Auburn number two and Boise State and TCU biting at its heels, what if (and that is a relatively big "IF") Auburn were to lose to Georgia, and then beat Alabama?  Would that be enough to get Auburn back to at least second place?

After Auburn's recent "downgrade," that scenario is not too likely.