Bowl Championship Series | featured news

Notre Dame’s impressive win on the road against Oklahoma Saturday meant the Irish should be considered BCS championship contenders with just a month or so left in this 2012 college football regular season. Confirmation of that was unveiled Sunday night in the latest BCS standings when the Irish, previously ranked No. 5 in the BCS, jumped up two spots to take the No. 3 ranking.

College football will finally have a playoff. Come 2014, the BCS is dead. A committee of university presidents on Tuesday approved the BCS commissioners’ plan for a four-team playoff to start in two years.

Fans of college football already knew that the Southeastern Conference is the nation's most dominant, even before the SEC claimed its sixth consecutive Bowl Championship Series title as Alabama crushed LSU 21-0.

Geno Smith tied a record for any bowl game with six touchdown passes as No. 23 West Virginia set a bowl scoring record by beating No. 14 Clemson in the Orange Bowl.

LSU did its part to make sure both the Tigers and Alabama get into the BCS national title game. Then Oklahoma State gave the voters a reason to rethink the rematch. The top-ranked Tigers locked up a spot in the championship on Jan. 9 in New Orleans with a 42-10 victory against No. 12 Georgia in the Southeastern Conference title game in Atlanta on Saturday.

The Count: With three SEC West teams atop the BCS standings and a division title a possible obstacle to success, this national-championship race calls for an explainer.

No. 6 Oregon ran over No. 3 Stanford and all but ended the Cardinal's hopes for a BCS title spot. LaMichael James ran for 146 yards and three touchdowns as Oregon ran for more than 200 yards in a 53-30 win Saturday night.

The Bowl Championship Series stripped Southern California of its 2004 title on Monday, leaving that season without a BCS champion....

For a brief moment, Michael Dyer stopped running. Hold on. No whistle. No ref raising his hand. So he started running again - past the tackler who thought he had him down, deep into Oregon territory. A once-in-a-lifetime run, the kind that wins championships.

BCS executive director Bill Hancock says he doubts "financial inducements," such as the one Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is considering, will lead to a major college football playoff....