Stanford Moves Up to No. 6 in BCS Standings

by Scott Allen on Nov 20, 2025 5:46 PM PST

Stanford moved up to No. 6 in this week's BCS standings.

After four of the top seven teams lost this weekend, there was a major shakeup in the BCS standings. With its 31-28 win over Cal, Stanford moved up to No. 6.

LSU remained No. 1 after cruising against Ole Miss.

Oklahoma State, which lost at Iowa State on Friday, slipped from No. 2 to No. 4.

Alabama moved into the No. 2 spot with a win over Georgia Southern and Arkansas, which plays at LSU next weekend, is No. 3.

Oregon's loss to USC dropped the Ducks from No. 4 all the way to No. 10.

Virginia Tech, which squeaked by Duke, got blown out by Clemson, and has played Appalachian State and Arkansas State this season, is somehow No. 5. Please. That's an absolute joke.

Oregon's loss to the Trojans took the Ducks out of the national title race but Chip Kelly's squad still controls its own destiny in the Pac-12 North. If Oregon can take care of Oregon State in the Civil War, which is being played at Autzen Stadium, the Ducks will clinch the division title and play the South champion for a berth in the Rose Bowl.

Assuming Oregon beats the Beavers, Stanford would probably get an at-large BCS bid with a win over Notre Dame. The Cardinal would need to finish in the top 4 of the BCS standings, as they did last year, to guarantee a berth.

So...root for Oregon State, Virginia, LSU, Auburn, Oklahoma (to beat Oklahoma State in two weeks), and all of the teams that Stanford has beaten. Beyond that, root for the end of the BS that is the BCS. (These rooting interests have been updated since original post based on some of the comments below.)

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Comments

I hate the BCS

by TheFreakSFG on Nov 20, 2025 5:49 PM PST reply actions 1 recs

Va Tech is #18 in Sagarin’s Elo Chess rankings (the one that goes to the BCS) and 29th in his predictor (the one that uses margin of victory and is more accurate in measuring team strength. It amazes me that the other computer rankings all have them in the top 10. I am a huge stat nerd and fan of good computer rankings, but under the current system, the computer rankings are a joke.

long live the jd.

by jksnake99 on Nov 20, 2025 5:56 PM PST reply actions 1 recs

The BCS is ok, but they should be careful selecting computer rankings. The only one that publishes the formula, Colley, is pretty good (although I’d tweak it a bit). Sagarin and Massey look quite solid as well (I think they also have a math/statistics background). Wolfe and A&H don’t follow enough, and Billingsley is atrocious (even though it has Stanford at #4!): depends too much on his pre-season rankings, and does not re-calculate the full ranking after each week.
Just disgraceful.

by Euler on Nov 20, 2025 6:43 PM PST up reply actions

I totally agree. Must be more selective about which rankings are used. I also detest the absence of margin of victory in the BCS computer rankings, which forces Sagarin to submit his least accurate ranking instead of the one he would like to use.

long live the jd.

by jksnake99 on Nov 20, 2025 7:31 PM PST up reply actions

No kidding!
Margin of victory is my biggest peeve. With a cap on ~25 points, teams wouldn’t have incentives to run up the score, and it would separate the pretenders (like South Carolina, #8 without MoV, #25 with) from better teams.

by Euler on Nov 20, 2025 9:40 PM PST up reply actions

The absence of margin of victory, though, is also a benefit. For conferences with four non-conference games, they can easily schedule terrible opponents and win by huge margins, artificially inflating their won-loss record. That’s part of the reason why it was taken out in the first place, to prevent teams from scheduling multiple cupcakes before conference play.

by RedOscar on Nov 20, 2025 11:01 PM PST up reply actions

I’ve heard that criticism before. It must have come from some bad computer rankings that the BCS was using before.

Good algorithms, like ELO, are not fooled by that.
They expect you to beat cupcakes by a lot, so you don’t actually gain anything by scheduling them. And if you actually only squeak by the cupcake, they rightly penalize you.
Thus, ranking-wise, with Margin of Victory into account, scheduling cupcakes would not have an upside. MoV actually incentivizes harder scheduling.

by Euler on Nov 20, 2025 11:18 PM PST up reply actions

Actually

I don’t think Stanford wants Arkansas to win. They want Auburn to win, though. An Arkansas win does nothing but shake up the top three, since I doubt LSU would drop lower than two spots. An Auburn win, though, drops Alabama to two losses, and it would be extremely difficult for voters to justify having a two-loss Alabama team that lost to #24 Auburn in front of at max five one-loss teams. The computers, meanwhile, might drop a two-loss Alabama to about even with Stanford’s current overall ranking, based on the fact that Auburn is ranked 22nd in the computers and #22 Notre Dame is ranked 25th.

So for the most optimal results and a top-four finish, Stanford I would think wants Auburn, Virginia (or Clemson in the ACC title game), Oregon State, and Oklahoma to win against their opponents.

by RedOscar on Nov 20, 2025 6:35 PM PST reply actions

Agreed

As I posted on ESPN, the back-of-the-envelope calculation of the most likely path to the NCG (that doesn’t include other paths like VTech losing to Virginia)

Prob - Result
=======
80% - Stanford beats Notre Dame
75% - VTech loses to Clemson
60% - OkST loses to Oklahoma
90% - Arkansas loses to LSU
10% - Alabama loses to Auburn
-—————————————————————————————
3.2% - Stanford goes to the National Championship game

Pretty solid :o)

by Euler on Nov 20, 2025 6:39 PM PST up reply actions

Make sense

It was fun rooting for Arkansas to beat LSU last year. Guess we should root for the Tigers this time.

by Scott Allen on Nov 20, 2025 7:28 PM PST up reply actions

lets see where things shake out after next week...

but still, It amazes me that somehow strength of schedule only matters in some cases, and it seems to trump losing to a mediocre team. It is one thing for Stanford (or Oregon for that matter) to lose to quality opponents - you come at the king you’d best not miss. But how does a team that lost to a 6-4 Iowa State team rate ahead of Stanford? What about a team that only has one victory in the top 25, and that’s to the #24 team?

I suppose it doesn’t really matter - win next week and the odds of a BCS bowl are pretty high. Still, seems like the guys behind the computers need to go back and adjust their algorithms.

by RickeySteals on Nov 20, 2025 6:39 PM PST reply actions

Oklahoma State

How are they still in the mix despite a loss to an unranked opponent? No one seems to mention that, but it sticks out to me like a sore thumb.

by CardiGrl on Nov 21, 2025 6:33 AM PST reply actions

The Big 12, as a conference, only dropped something like three out of their thirty non-conference games, and only one of them was courtesy of Kansas (who is winless in conference and 2-7 overall). The computers, therefore, rationalize that they’re much better than the other conferences, except for the SEC.

by RedOscar on Nov 21, 2025 9:08 AM PST up reply actions

Right

But none of the “analysts” seem to have a problem with it, despite the discussion immediately following the loss about Keenum losing his Heisman candidacy and OK State out of the title picture for good.

BCSucks?

by CardiGrl on Nov 21, 2025 10:08 AM PST up reply actions