BCS Rankings: TCU Will Bust the BCS Due to Houston's Epic Collapse

The TCU Horned Frogs are perhaps the luckiest team in the nation to even be in consideration for a BCS bowl.

We will find out soon enough if they are really charmed and actually get selected to play in one.

There is a good chance they will.

When the Houston Cougars lost, they gave up their chance to play in a BCS bowl as the champions of a non-automatic qualifying conference. The only ranked teams that have won a non-AQ conference outright are now Southern Miss and TCU.

As champions, TCU Horned Frogs have already completed one step of the process of getting to a BCS bowl. Here are the other steps.

The team needs to be ranked ahead of Southern Miss. That should be easy, but is not certain; the Golden Eagles just pummeled a quality opponent while TCU whopped a cupcake.

The Horned Frogs need to finish ahead of the highest-ranked Big East champion. That will likely be WVU, a team that barely escaped a loss to unranked South Florida with a three-point win. They were No. 23 before the game.

Most importantly, TCU needs to finish in the Top 16 of the final BCS rankings. Those come out tonight at 8:15 p.m. EDT and will air live on ESPN.

Will voters—who now know that awarding them a Top 16 ranking pretty much guarantees their spot in another BCS bowl—give the Horned Frogs enough respect?

I think they have to.

Houston is going to drop dramatically after that loss and could easily fall behind TCU. Georgia was blown out by LSU and that could hurt them in the human-run polls. Oklahoma was decimated by OK State and could free fall. There is a small chance Michigan State will drop as well with their loss to Wisconsin.

It’s not going to be a shoe-in, but TCU should be able to shock the world and end up in another BCS bowl this year. If, that is, a few votes go their way and they move up two spots during a week where they won and many teams ahead of them lost.