#2 Dilemma

This year has been a topsy-turvy team for college football in general & none more so than those teams who were ranked - you guessed it - #2.

USC & California held on to the #2 spot for a short time before Stanford & Oregon State respectively sent them packing down the rankings ladder.

The latest #2 victim is South Florida, who got knocked off by Rutgers last night 30-27. Which is going to lead us to the next question: who's grabbing that cursed #2 ranking? Boston College? LSU? Oklahoma? Oregon?

I wish I knew. And man, do I loathe the Bowl Championship Series ranking system with a passion.

But anyways: whoever is moving up to #2 had better be on their guard like Ohio State needs to be on their guard with their #1 ranking (LSU losing their hold of the top spot to Kentucky should be caution enough already); we've seen just how much of a bugbear being ranked #2 has been for three teams this season alone.

Proceeding with caution is something, it seems, has been if not a complete joke this year in the world of college football, more like an anomaly as some lesser-known ballclubs are moving out of the doghouses & into the higher echelons which the elite football powerhouses are known to dwell. And for the next team who gets ranked #2, I'd advise them to be ready to play unless their next opponent wants the immediate go-ahead to knock them off (which Rutgers did BTW to South Florida).

The number two: what a dreaded number it has become only a month into the 2007 season. And I thought that being ranked #1 was bad enough. Just to be #2 this year is saying that you're a marked team, no matter how many awesome players you have on the field.

USC. Cal-Berkeley. Now South Florida. Who's next to fall?