Stumping For Votes

By Ivan Maisel, ESPN.com

It still is too soon to engage in what have become the college football rites of November: the statistical, head-to-head, scheduling analyses of the candidates for the BCS National Championship Game. They are not unlike another rite of November: the race to name the 2008 presidential candidates.

The BCS race engages and indulges in pseudo-debates, sound bites, regional biases, favorite sons and other staples of C-SPAN. Only the sites are different. Iowa and New Hampshire don't have dogs in the BCS hunt, unless you include Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, a former Iowa defensive back, or Oregon offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, doing his Dr. Frankenstein imitation in Eugene after bringing the New Hampshire Wildcats to I-AA life.

Life might not always imitate art, but in this case, football imitates politics. Here is a guide to the current BCS wannabes and the presidential candidates they most resemble.

Ohio State: Hillary Clinton The Buckeyes don't make waves. They go out of their way not to be controversial, including not scheduling anyone this season who could beat them. They hope to bland their way to the nomination.

LSU: Rudy Giuliani The Tigers are strong on defense, and their fans aggressively promote their qualifications. They gloss over their past missteps, hoping everyone focuses on their willingness to take on anybody.

Oregon: John Edwards A good-looking team with an engaging personality, but the Ducks' stance on defensive issues is wanting. Do they have the substance to go all the way?

Oklahoma: Barack Obama Here's a team that looks like BCS material, and it has all the resources in the world. But its potential continues to outweigh its performance. Maybe the next race?

Kansas: Mike Huckabee A plucky candidate that can't get anyone to pay attention, the Jayhawks keep hanging around, charming people and slowly moving their way up the polls.

West Virginia: Mitt Romney The Mountaineers have great numbers and a wide-open attack, but they have done nothing to assure the voters they have the gravitas to make it to the top.

USC: Fred Thompson The Trojans get a bump from their Hollywood connection, but once they got on the stump, they looked nothing at all like a BCS candidate.

Hawaii: Ron Paul No matter how the Warriors perform, no matter how much support they drum up among the public, the opinion-makers never will take them seriously.

Chip Off The ...

By Pat Forde, ESPN.com

EUGENE, Ore. -- Chip Kelly doesn't sound right in this crunchy college town.

The first-year Oregon offensive coordinator's voice screams Northeast. That's not a surprise, considering he came here after eight years at I-AA New Hampshire. But he fits the Ducks and their offensive talents like a pair of well-worn Tevas.

Kelly gets my vote for Hire of the Year nationally on the coordinator level. He wasn't a big name replacing Gary Crowton, who left for LSU, but Kelly was just the spread-offense expert Oregon needed to fully exploit and develop the abilities of quarterback Dennis Dixon.

Kelly illustrates the truism that there are talented people at all levels of the game, just waiting for their chance. He's not awed by the job of drawing up plays in the Pac-10 after all those years in I-AA -- although he admitted that in Week 9, USC's personnel "looked like the [New England] Patriots" on the field before the game.

"At New Hampshire, we beat Delaware 45-44 after being down 31-3," Kelly said. "That was a great game for us. Sometimes it's not who you play -- it's the game itself."

But sometimes it is who you coach. And Kelly is very happy tutoring his current quarterback.

Under Kelly's guidance, Dixon has gone from a mercurial, mistake-prone junior to an almost-error-proof senior. He's thrown just three interceptions this year -- down from a dozen in 2006 while sharing time with Brady Leaf -- and one was an end-of-the half Hail Mary while another was a tipped ball.

"I'd put his judgment and decision-making up against anybody in the country," Kelly said.

And Ducks coach Mike Bellotti would put Kelly's play calling up against anybody in the country, too.

Job Still To Do

By Mark Schlabach, ESPN.com

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Can Boston College do what Michigan and California didn't do earlier this season?

The No. 2 Eagles were upset by Florida State 27-17 on Saturday night at Alumni Stadium, knocking the Eagles from the ranks of college football's last unbeatens.

Now, the challenge for first-year BC coach Jeff Jagodzinski is keeping the Eagles focused on the task at hand: winning the school's first ACC football championship.

"This has not deterred us from where we want to go, and that's the ACC championship game," Jagodzinski said. "This is one game, one of 12. We are right in the thick of things. All we've got to do is take care of our business and just come back next week against Maryland and go play football, and we will."

With a 4-1 record in ACC play, the Eagles still have a one-game lead over Clemson and defending conference champion Wake Forest in the Atlantic Division standings. Florida State, a 12-time ACC champion, is two losses behind the Eagles.

The Eagles play their next two games on the road -- Saturday at Maryland and Nov. 17 at Clemson. BC finishes the regular season at home Nov. 24 against Miami.

Boston College hasn't played in the ACC championship game in Jacksonville, Fla., since joining the league before the 2005 season. The winner of the ACC title game earns an automatic spot in a lucrative BCS bowl game.

In fact, the Eagles never have won an outright conference championship. BC finished in a three-way tie for the Big East title in 2004, but Pittsburgh won a tiebreaker and played in the Fiesta Bowl.

So, clearly, there still is plenty left to play for at Boston College.

The Future Looks Bright

By Chris Low, ESPN.com

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Nick Saban wasn't into moral victories Saturday night.

He left those to his devoted congregation, better known as the Alabama football fans. The 41-34 loss to LSU was tough to swallow for the Crimson Tide Nation, especially since their team was up by 10 points late in the third quarter, but they waded through the disappointment by peering into the future.

They liked what they saw.

As one grim-faced, yet-proud Alabama fan said as he slowly made his way down the ramp from the upper deck at Bryant-Denny Stadium, "If Saban would have been on the other sideline, they would have beaten us by four touchdowns."

Saban's take was a little different. He said Alabama simply wasn't consistent enough to beat a team as talented as LSU. Linebacker Darrin Mustin took it a step further. He said the Tide had the Tigers set up for the kill ... and blew it.

But even in defeat, who can blame the Alabama fans for being so giddy about the future? Saban recruited to LSU 17 of the 22 players who started for the Tigers on Saturday, including 10 of the 11 defensive starters. Any takers on how many of those 10 end up spending some time on an NFL roster?

And yet, Saban was able to find a way to keep Alabama in the game with a chance to win it right up until the very end.

Nobody expected any miracles this season, not even for $4 million, but he nearly pulled one off.

His old team, although many of the LSU players did their best to downplay it, clearly was motivated by all the Saban talk in the two weeks leading up to the game.

Senior running back Jacob Hester said it was more about making sure they had their current coach's back. Of course, they also realized Les Miles might not have made it back inside the Baton Rouge city limits had the Tigers lost Saturday.

"We definitely wanted to win one for him," Hester said. "He's done such a great job, and so many people hadn't respected it. We wanted to get him this win so everybody could see how good a coach he is."

Mack Daddy

By Brett Edgerton, ESPN.com

Rallies and road wins. Two hallmarks of the Mack Brown Era at Texas were on full display Saturday afternoon in Stillwater. In outscoring Oklahoma State 24-0 in the fourth quarter, the Longhorns staged their biggest fourth-quarter rally ever and beat the Cowboys 38-35 on Ryan Bailey's 40-yard field goal as time expired. The five biggest comebacks in the 115-year history of Texas football all have come under Brown -- and now, three of them have come against Oklahoma State.

The Longhorns now have lost just two of their past 35 true road games, and those two were by a combined seven points. While it's fair to point out that none of those road games have been against Oklahoma, it's still a remarkable run. In fact, since Brown was blown out in the first two road trips of his debut season (in 1998 at UCLA and Kansas State), the Horns haven't lost a single road game by more than a touchdown.

Against the Pokes, they were well on their way to such a loss before Jamaal Charles decided to take over. A week after rallying Texas past Nebraska with 216 yards and three touchdowns in the fourth quarter, Charles ran for another 125 yards and two touchdowns in this final stanza. That's 341 yards and five touchdowns over the past two fourth quarters. Hey, if he had been able to do that every quarter the past two weeks, he would be averaging 682 rushing yards per game with 20 touchdowns. The Longhorns would never have to rally again.