BCS Rankings 2011: Does Houston Actually Have a Shot at Earning a BCS Berth?

If you take a look up and down the first BCS rankings for the 2011 season (below), you'll notice that there is no shortage of oddities.

One of the oddest oddities concerns the Houston Cougars. At 6-0, they are the lowest-ranked undefeated team in the Top 25, though it's not hard to see why. Five of their wins have come against five different versions of St. Mary's School for the Blind. Another came against UCLA, which may as well be St. Mary's School for the Blind at this point.

As such, it's no surprise that the human pollsters aren't all that high on Houston, as the Cougars are No. 22 in the Harris Poll and No. 20 in the USA Today poll.

As is their custom, the BCS computers (aka "Skynet") disagree. They have Houston at an average rank of No. 16, with one system ranking them as high as No. 11.

This is madness, of course, but there might just be a method to it. After all, the computers do like road wins, and the Cougars have three of those to brag about. If they had some wins over ranked teams to go with them, they could very well be in the Top 10.

Alas, wins over ranked teams are not going to be forthcoming for Houston, as none of its remaining opponents are ranked, nor will any of them be ranked anytime soon.

But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Houston has dominated weak competition to this point, along the way establishing the country's best passing attack and fourth-highest scoring offense. It stands to reason that this will continue, resulting in an undefeated season for the Cougars.

By the time we get to the end of the regular season, there aren't going to be many undefeated teams to go around. As such, it really wouldn't be at all surprising if Houston ends up near or in the Top 10 when all is said and done.

And that, my friends, is BCS bowl territory.

The question then will be how the Cougars can actually sneak into a BCS bowl via an at-large bid. As you may be able to guess, that is going to be much easier said than done. Brand recognition counts for a lot with these at-large bids, and Houston has virtually none of that.

Given the way things look, we can probably count the Rose Bowl out. Both Stanford and Wisconsin look good enough to take care of business in the Pac-12 and Big Ten, respectively, but both are going to have a hard time climbing high enough to get into the BCS title game.

That will allow them to fulfill contractual obligations to the Rose Bowl, leaving three bowls for Houston to get into.

One of the bowls will have to take the blasted Big East champion, which will have to be paired with a reputable program in order to sell the game, so that for all intents and purposes leaves two bowls for Houston to sneak into.

Because there will be at least one other big-name program to satisfy, I think the only way Houston is actually getting into a BCS bowl is if Boise State loses a game along the way.

If Boise and Houston are both undefeated, there's just no way a bowl is going to select Houston before selecting Boise, especially seeing as how there's just no way Houston is going to be ranked higher than Boise if they both finish undefeated.

So in order for Houston to actually earn a BCS bowl berth, it will have to finish undefeated, hope that a number of other teams drop off along the way, and hope like hell that Boise State loses at least one game.

Good luck with that.

Rank	Team	BCS Average
1	LSU	.9522
2	Alabama	.9519
3	Oklahoma	.930
4	Oklahoma State	.857
5	Boise State	.803
6	Wisconsin	.771
7	Clemson	.758
8	Stanford	.748
9	Arkansas	.626
10	Oregon	.619
11	Kansas State	.569
12	Virginia Tech	.505
13	Nebraska	.497
14	South Carolina	.491
15	West Virginia	.373
16	Michigan State	.329
17	Texas A&M	.308
18	Michigan	.300
19	Houston	.286
20	Auburn	.265
21	Penn State	.231
22	Georgia Tech	.197
23	Illinois	.152
24	Texas	.135
25	Washington	.087