Oklahoma is No. 1 in the first BCS rankings, released Sunday night.

The Sooners (6-0, 2-0 Big 12) jumped up to No. 3 in the AP and Coaches' polls after blowing out Iowa State 52-0 on Saturday, and — in part because of previous AP/Coaches No. 1 Ohio State's 31-18 loss to then-No. 18 Wisconsin — hold the coveted top spot in the BCS rankings that determine postseason bowl placement.

Oregon sits at No. 2 in the BCS, followed by Boise State, Auburn and TCU in the top 5. LSU, Michigan State, Alabama, Utah and Ohio State round out the first top 10.

"I understand that the announcement of the poll makes for good conversation among media and fans, but two games into our conference season, it's too early for us to give it any attention," OU coach Bob Stoops told to the Oklahoma Daily. "At this point, it just speaks to the quality of the schedule we've played. And while I appreciate the caliber of those teams, our focus has to be on the games we have remaining. We're not talking or thinking about anything but playing Missouri."

How important is being in the top five of the standings? If history is a guide, 20 of the 24 teams to play in the title game were in the top five in the initial standings. No team has reached the title game from lower than 12th in the initial release (from ESPN.com)

COMPLETE RANKINGS

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Winning NFL picks, odds and power rankings all from our friends at Doc's Sports Service.

***

Week #5 is here and there are several games between ranked teams that have the potential for future BCS implications. While some teams are trying to stay on top, there are a couple of smaller teams that will be hoping for some upsets. Here are a few previews as well as my predictions for the week...

#21 Texas at #8 Oklahoma - Coming off an embarassing 22 point loss last week at home to UCLA, Mack Brown is going to stop at nothing to prevent back to back losses, getting knocked from the top 25 and even worse a loss to OU. Last week Texas gave up 27 passing yards and still lost. They also gave up 264 on the ground and you have got to believe that the OU running game is going to have a great day and the Texas defense will have a hell of a time trying to keep Landry Jones from having big numbers. Gilbert has been anything but incredible so far in trying to make Texas fans forget Colt McCoy thus far. This Texas team is just not the same without a leader at QB, and they still don't have a RB that has over 200yds rushing. Texas will have a descent season, but I just don't think this will be a game Texas will want to remember...Oklahoma 41, Texas 24

#7 Florida at #1 Alabama - If the top 25 polls didn't come out until this week I am just not sure Florida would be in the top 10. They, much like Texas, are attempting to replace the face of their football program for the past few years under center. John Brantley is doing pretty well so far with 6tds and only 1 int. but the offense has taken some criticism for their slow starts, one in particular was the Miami Oh. game to open the season. One can only wonder what the QB position may look like had 2007 Freshman Cameron Newton had stayed at Florida, but I'd say they are probably pretty happy with the outcome. Brantley will continue to do fine....Just not this Saturday night. John will leave the swamp and enter the sea of crimson under the lights at 'Bama. Alabama has 3RBs that have over 25 carries and each average over 7 yards per carry.  Oh and by the way, they also have the reigning Heisman winner in Ingram. I am sure the Florida defense will find a way to keep it entertaining to watch, but I expect Alabama to pull away late and wear Florida down as well as force Brantley to make poor decisions. Alabama has no business losing this game...Alabama 31, Florida 20

#19 Michigan at Indiana - I may be the only person reading this that cares at all about this game, but that's just fine by me. I don't have a good feeling about this game Saturday. I am a UM fan and the thought of Rich Fraudriguez on the sidelines screaming at the miserable defense throughout the entire game as Ben Chappell looks like the 2nd coming of Joe Namath is making me lose sleep. I want to believe. I want to believe that Denard is going to stay healthy, throw for 200, run for 120 and the UM defense will grow up right before my very eyes. The thing is, I know better. I know what a Rodriguez version of Michigan football looks like and it doesn't sit well with me. The defensive backfield has almost no experience and the WR turned Safety Cameron Gordon, while he hits hard, is slow. My problem with this game isn't the offense at all, I am scared that the Indiana offense may have a bigger day than the Michigan offense and that is hard to believe I know. I hope Rodriguez proves me wrong...But until then...Indiana 37, Michigan 35

OSU 49, Illinois 13

Wisconsin 23, Michigan St. 21

Stanford 31, Oregon 30

Iowa 28, Penn St. 24

Boston College 16, Notre Dame 9  (One can only hope)

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As we continue our series previewing the college football conferences here on GetSportsInfo, it's time to take a look at the star-studded Big 12. 

Favorite: Oklahoma

A lot of people are ready to write Oklahoma off after losing five bowl games in six years, including three National Championships, but if you look at the Sooners there's no reason to dismiss them so quickly. Sam Bradford deciding to come back and compete for a National Championship instead of cashing his check from the Jets makes the Sooners one of the top teams in the nation instantly. Bradford is a special player and the offense shouldn't lose anything coming off a year in which they averaged 51 points per contest. They have a backfield that could be the best in the nation with a 1-2 rushing punch of DeMarco Murray and Chris Brown and the coaches are high on the offensive line despite having to replace four of the five positions.  

On defense is where Oklahoma could really see improvements however. Last year the offense came up short in some offensive shootouts because the defense couldn't stop anybody, but this year the Sooners could actually hold teams in check. The defensive line boasts quite possibly the most dominant front seven in college football. They could quite possibly have six legitimate draft picks on the front line alone. Couple that with Ryan Reynolds, Keenan Clayton and Travis Lewis at the linebacker positions and no one is going to have succcess running the football. The secondary will not be near as talented as the front seven, but they should be better than last year and not near as much of a weakness especially with the pressure being provided up front. 

Sleeper: Missouri

Everyone is expecting Missouri to slip back into mediocrity, and with good reason after losing players such as Chase Daniel, Chase Coffman, Jeff Wolfert, Jeremy Maclin, Stryker Sulak, Ziggy Hood, William Moore, Brock Christopher, and Tommy Saunders. However, the future is not as grim as many believe. Head Coach Gary Pinkel and his staff have done an unbelievable job when it comes to recruiting. They haven't let a single big recruit slip out of Missouri and have even been able to steal some top talents out of places like Texas and other locations with big name programs to actually upgrade the talent of the team. They will be young and will have a lot of potential that has to be realized before success will come, but this team has maybe as much talent as any in the conference.  New starting quarterback Blaine Gabbert will have to replace legend Chase Daniel, but he will actually allow the offense to do things that they couldn't with Daniel. He has more upside than Daniel did and with that flexibility he provides them it's not out of the question to say he could have Tigers fans forgetting about their beloved Daniel. 

Overrated: Texas

Now before everyone gets all pissed off about that, know that I'm not saying Texas won't be good and win a lot of games... Because they are and they will. However, when anything less than winning a Big 12 title and ending up in Pasadena in early January is acceptable there is a big chance that this team is overrated and won't achieve those standards. Oklahoma is better, Oklahoma State has the potential and maturity to pull an upset, unlike last year, and going to Missouri could be a letdown game for the Longhorns if the Red River rivalry doesn't go in their favor. 

Final Take: 

The Big 12 is not as good as the SEC is top to bottom, but it is a heck of a lot more fun to watch. With stars on every roster in this conference, Saturdays should consist of bigtime offensive shootouts on a regular basis. The Big 12 could boast seven of the top ten draft choices in next year's NFL draft.

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The NCAA tournament got underway on Thursday and after 12+ hours of watching hoops, there was plenty of excitement to talk about...

*How about my Hilltoppers? Western Kentucky held off Illinois, 76-72. They were up big and made me stress things out at the end, but a win is a win baby! All five starters scored in double-figures for Western Kentucky, including a team-high 17 points from Steffphon Pettigrew. The Hilltoppers became the second team to win a tournament game in consecutive years as a 12-seed or worse (Tulsa in 2002).

*Top Teams Roll - Memphis and Villanova got a bit of a scare in the opening round, but for the most part the top teams rolled with North Carolina, Connecticut, Duke Memphis, and Oklahoma winning their games by a combined average of 29.1 points.

*Close But No Cigar - VCU, a trendy No. 11 seed pick, had the ball in their best player's hands (Eric Maynor) with a shot to win it at the buzzer, but Maynor drove the lane and his shot roll off the rim and the clock hit zeroe and the Bruins squeaked out a 65-64 win. UCLA, which has made the Final Four each of the last three seasons, narrowly escaped a first-round exit.

*Tigers Impressive - Two streaks ended Thursday: LSU got its first NCAA tournament win since the 2006 Elite Eight, while Butler had its four-game, first round winning streak snapped.  The Tigers are underrated and play great defense. They are going to push North Carolina more than most think on Saturday.

*Watching Games Online - I loved my setup yesterday. I have my desktop computer going right into my HDTV and watched split screen with CBS-TV on one side and CBSSports.com on the otherside. Pretty sweet, especially since it was free. The delay is annoying at times, but I will deal with it.

*My Bracket - 14-2 so far as I had lost with Clemson and VCU. Today is going to be a bit more crazy though, mark my words.

*Prediction Time - Arizona and Utah State today are my underdog picks. Also, look for FSU to blowout Wisconsin.

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WOW! The NCAA tournament is still a week away, but the drama has already begun in college hoops. There are still three days of hoops action until Selection Sunday, but let's look at some of the developing storylines and recap some of the recent action.

SYRACUSE BEATS UCONN IN INSTANT CLASSIC
Does it get any better than this? Syracuse outlasted Connecticut, winning 127-117 in six overtimes. Check out some of the numbers: it took 3 hours, 46 minutes it took to play the game that ended at 1:22 a.m., the teams scored combined 244 points, 102 of which came after the regulation buzzer, there were eight players who fouled out, and six who registered double-doubles. The game could have ended at the end of regulation, but the refs waived off a Syracuse three-pointer that would have won the game at the buzzer. It was the right call, but man was it close. I liked because it allowed for the guys to settle it on the court. The refs may have ruled differently had they realized it would take six extra frames to decide the contest.

OKLAHOMA, PITTSBURGH DISAPPOINT
All season long teams struggled to stay atop the polls. I was never sold on Oklahoma and there struggles down the stretch confirmed my suspicisions. There 71-70 loss to Oklahoma State shows they are not a serious contender for the national title as some have said. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh was even more disappointing. West Virginia dominated them, costing the Panthers there shot at a No. 1 seed. I still like Pitt as a team to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament, but they are going to have start hitting some free throws and play with a bit more consistency if they are going to make a splash.

LOUISVILLE A #1 SEED?
Rick Pitino's bunch looks so good at times and now they have a chance to get the elusive No. 1 seed with Pitt and UConn already out of the Big East tournament. The Cardinals have the talent to win it all and are definitely going to be going deep on my brackets, all 20 of them...LOL!

GOOD DAY FOR KENTUCKY
For one day UK fans had something to be excited about. First was the news that Patrick Patterson will return for his junior season. Then there was the Wildcats' impressive performance against Ole Miss. The best part of the win was that it wasn't only Patterson and Jodie Meeks carrying the load. Perry Stevenson and Darius Miller also offered some production. The Cats are still on the bubble, but if they can beat LSU on Friday they are starting to look like they will make the dance.

XAVIER BOUNCES BACK
As I wrote earlier this week, Xavier has little to gain. However, after their dud effort against Richmond to close out the regular season it was good to see them get things rolling against St. Louis to kickoff their A-10 run. If they win the conference tournament they could still sneak in as No. 4 seed.

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GetSportsRadio - Hoop Scoop (mp3) - ESPN's Mark Adams joins Chad Brendel and Greg Shoemaker to talk college hoops

Don't kid yourself, Connecticut (22-1) is off the hook. They are the best offesnive team in the Big East and after watching the 7-foot-3 Hasheem Thabeet dominate against Syracuse on Wednesday night you have to be impressed with their defense too. The Huskies play in basketball's best conference too, the Big East.

Still, North Carolina is the best team in the land. Period.

Tyler Hansbrough's (22.8 ppg) numbers are as good as they were last year, but there the hype is nowhere near it was. Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington are both averaging about 15 ppg and in total six players are in double figures.

Coming into the 2008-09 season it was almost as if the Tar Heels had already been crowned number #1. I was waiting for the NCAA to call off the season and cut straight to One Shining Moment. The talking heads on ESPN were even speculating they might not lose a game until February. That's a ton of pressure.

The Tar Heels hit their bump in the road when they fell to Boston College. Next was the lost to Wake Forest. Suddenly UNC looked like the third-best team in the ACC and far from the best in the nation.

Since then we've watched Pittsburgh, Wake Forest, Duke, and now UConn take the reigns atop the polls. Meanwhile, North Carolina has been rolling. They've won seven straight games after picking up their fourth straight win at Cameron Indoor Arena and Coach K court. During the latest streak, Carolina is outscoring their opponents by nearly 17 points per game.

The Huskies are contenders, but I'm ready to move Roy Williams' bunch back to the top.

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Florida quarterback Tim Tebow let his fans know last weekend that he would return for his senior season and now it looks the like the quarterback that beat him out in the Heisman Trophy race this year, Sam Bradford, could be returning to college for another season too.

ESPN.com is reporting that Bradford is expected to announce that he's returning to Oklahoma. The Heisman Trophy winner is projected as a possible No. 1 overall pick if he enters the draft.

Offensive tackle Trent Williams, who said Wednesday that he would return to the Sooners next season, said he believes Bradford will return.

"My gut feeling is that Sam is coming back," said Williams, who spoke with Bradford. "The entire state may be very happy."

It would be nice to see Bradford return for another season, but I couldn't blame him if he left.

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from the BostonHerald.com:

The national championship has never seemed more mythical.

College football has been played in this land for 140 years, and for long stretches of Thursday night’s tractor pull between Florida and Oklahoma, it looked as if these two teams were trying to set the game back by at least half that. The first three quarters were so boring, they should have been moved from FOX to C-SPAN.

The Gators’ 24-14 win over the Sooners did nothing to dispel competing claims from Southern California, Utah and Texas about who belonged in the top spot. Earlier in the week, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he was looking into whether the BCS violated antitrust laws by barring the 13-0 Utes — the only unbeaten team in college football’s top division — from the national title game.

COMPLETE ARTICLE

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The bowl games finally start this weekend. Fellow GetSportsInfo.com writer, Jeremy Fischer, and myself have put together our picks including how confident we are in them. In case you've never done a pick 'em game like this before, here's how it works. In addition to picking who you think will win the game, you assign a number to that pick as to how confident you think that pick is going to be right. There are 34 bowl games this year (way too many in most people's opinion, but that's beside the point), so the max number of confidence points you can give to one game is, yep, you guessed it, 34. The game you are least confident in you assign one point too, and fill in everything in between.

A lot of office pools are done like this and make it much more challenging than simply picking a winner for each game. As J-Fish states when it comes to doing a pick 'em game like this, "I have seen many strategies and I prefer the one that calls for using the higher confidence points on the bigger BCS games." He goes on to give his reasons as to why.

"Right or wrong, the larger conference teams get more coverage. The more information that is out there, the better informed pick you can make. The more informed you are, the more confident you'll be about a particular selection." Makes sense right? So picking the BCS bowl games really isn't as difficult as picking some of the more obscure games like the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl between Southern Mississippi and Troy that provide more difficulty in not only picking who will win, but deciding how confident you are in that pick.

J-Fish goes on to say, "Unless you fancy yourself as the next Jimmy the Greek, don't over analyze. The amount of games will definitely lead to paralysis-by-analysis." In my opinion, when it comes to picking some of the lower level bowl games, its almost more of a gut feeling when making that selection than anything else.

With all that said, let's get to the picks. What you'll find below is the bowl schedule starting with the first game on the docket all the way to the National Championship game on January 8th. With each pick you'll see both J-Fish's pick as well as my own with a little bit of analysis and how many confidence points (#) we have assigned to the pick we've made. Let's get to it with a look at the BCS games.

January 1st
ROSE - Penn State vs. USC
JFISH: USC (34) - Too much defense.
DICO: USC (32) - Too much USC! PSU hasn't seen anything like the Trojans this year. Ask OSU how things worked out for them. Plus this is a "home game" for the Trojans.

FEDEX ORANGE - Cincinnati vs. Virginia Tech
JFISH: Cincinnati (22) - 1st BCS bowl berth will drive the Bearcats.
DICO: Cincinnati (10) - Special teams could be the difference in this game. Mardy Gilyard for the Bearcats is one of the best in the country in the return game. A chance to finish the season in the Top 10 will push the Bearcats to a win.

January 2nd
ALLSTATE SUGAR - Utah vs. Alabama
JFISH: Alabama (32) - Utah hasn't faced a defense like this.
DICO: Alabama (33) - See JFISH's comments...the Utes will have a hard time stopping the 'Bama offense as well.

January 5th
TOSTITOS FIESTA - Ohio State vs. Texas
JFISH: Texas (33) - Too much speed on defense, and the Horns will be playing angry because of the whole BIG XII, BCS screw job.
DICO: Texas (31) - QB Colt McCoy will be too much even for a good Buckeyes' defense. Terrelle Pryor will see what team speed on defense is all about against the Longhorns.

January 8th
FEDEX BCS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP - Florida vs. Oklahoma
JFISH: Florida (26) - Tebow/Harvin will find a way.
DICO: Oklahoma (22) - Bradford leads the most potent offense in the country. Even with the loss of DeMarco Murray at RB, the Sooners won't miss a beat. Expect a high scoring affair.

COMPLETE PICKS (ALL 34 GAMES) 

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This weekend the top two teams in the country separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Alabama won a tough game over LSU on the road, 27-21. Texas Tech dominated a good Oklahoma State team, defeating them 56-20. Both teams moved to 10-0. Alabama got 44 first place votes and Texas Tech got 21 in the latest AP Top 25 poll. They are the only two teams to receive first place votes this week as the votes were split between four teams last week.

The team that took the biggest hit this week was Penn State. Their last second loss to Iowa dropped them from third to seventh in the polls. While that's not a very far fall, their shot at the national title are pretty much done unless a lot of things happen to help them out.

The teams that benefit the most from Penn State's loss are Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and USC. They all moved up one spot in the rankings because of the Nittany Lion's loss.

Bouncing from the Top 25 are four teams; West Virginia, Califnornia, Georgia Tech and Maryland. With four leaving, four have to enter. Cincinnati moves into the Top 25 for the first time this year after beating two Top 25 teams in back-to-back games. They come in at 22 followed by three teams returning to the rankings; Oregon State, South Carolina and Tulsa.

Below is the complete list of the AP Top 25:

1. Alabama 10-0
2. Texas Tech 10-0
3. Florida 8-1
4. Texas 9-1
5. Oklahoma 9-1
6. USC 8-1
7. Penn Sate 9-1
8. Utah 10-0
9. Boise State 9-0
10. Ohio State 8-2
11. Oklahoma State 8-2
12. Missouri 8-2
13. Georgia 8-2
14. Ball State 9-0
15. TCU 9-2
16. BYU 9-1
17. North Carolina 7-2
18. Michigan State 9-2
19. LSU 6-3
20. Florida State 7-2
21. Pittsburgh 7-2
22. Cincinnati 7-2
23. Oregon State 6-3
24. South Carolina 7-3
25. Tulsa 8-1

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