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College Football Rankings Preview, Week 12: Could Boise State Jump TCU In BCS Or AP Poll?

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The top two spots in today's college football polls should remain the same, with the Oregon Ducks and Auburn Tigers winning -- though the gap might shrink a little after Oregon struggled for the first time all season and Auburn beat Georgia by three scores. But today's most interesting plot involves our two mid-majors: could the Boise St. Broncos pull closer to, or even ahead, of, the TCU Horned Frogs?

Style-points voters will be much more impressed by Boise's 52-14 road win against a despised rival than they will TCU falling behind early to the San Diego St. Aztecs, then only winning by five points at home. But each team's resume has started to shift a little bit as well -- Boise's first victim, the Virginia Tech Hokies, might go undefeated in the ACC, but TCU's marquee win, over the Utah Utes, looks far less impressive after the Utes got blown out yesterday by the otherwise 4-5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The Irish even gave up fewer points than did the Frogs' renowned defense.

Last week the Broncos were only 25 votes behind the Frogs in the AP Poll, and only ten back in the Coaches'. Those margins are about as close as any you'll find throughout any week's top 25. And Boise had more first-place votes than TCU did.

With no major upsets in the top of the rankings this week, I'm seeing the top tens shake out something like this later today:

  1. Oregon
  2. Auburn
  3. Boise St.
  4. TCU
  5. LSU
  6. Wisconsin
  7. Stanford
  8. Nebraska
  9. Ohio St.
  10. Oklahoma St.

Photographs by coka_koehler used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.