This week’s poll is out and while most of it is ho-hum, there are the requisite miscarriages of justice. In their annual ritual of determining that only 5 teams are capable of playing for the national title, several of college football’s inconvenient teams (mere mortals, really) took themselves out of the BCS picture. Notre Dame, Oregon, Penn State, LSU and Iowa all lost which means the only programs left to stiff are TCU, Boise State and Cincinnati. Assuming the BCS doesn’t give all 3 at-large bids to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place teams in the SEC, both the AP voters and the BCS are headed for smoother sailing.

It turns out the Oracle at Delphi’s pronouncement back in August that Florida, Texas and Alabama truly do reside on Mount Olympus was right. Which means the other teams that comprise college football probably will only have to offer up one team to the AP altar of self-congratulation. And while SEC #1 and Texas will play for the title, the loser of the SEC Title Game will be sipping hemlock while the other two members of the divine triumverate will be wrestling naked with each other. For the rest of us, it’s a small price to pay to protect the continued arrogance and self-entitlement of the world’s strangest and most righteous brotherhood: sports writers and university presidents.

Here is this week’s biggest joke. And it’s a full-blown, Bill Hicks-stlye punchline: after escaping with a win against lowly Arizona State, USC finds itself at #11, 3 spots ahead of Oregon. If my memory serves me correctly, Oregon absolutely undressed USC two weeks ago and shares a common record with the Trojans at 7-2. But Oregon’s road loss to PAC-10 #3 Stanford wasn’t good enough to repel the Trojans birthright of a higher ranking. Never mind the fact that Oregon is still #1 in the PAC-10. Or that USC is #4 in the PAC-10 (how can a team that is #4 in its own conference be ranked #11, ahead of all other teams in the same conference?). Or that, two weeks ago, Oregon beat them by 4 touchdowns.

USC’s superior ranking to Oregon is this week’s shining example of why the voters in the AP Poll are a collective joke. To be sure, the AP Poll doesn’t figure into the BCS rankings (ostensibly) but its establishment of teams’ positions early in the season sets the table for the BCS’s initial standings. There are 5 honorary members who, according to the AP, are allowed to play for the national title and will have, by writ from on high, every excuse made for them to ensure they stay alive. They are Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State, USC and any team in the SEC. If you’re not in the club, you might as well disband your squad and try your football hand on the New Mexico women’s soccer team.

UPDATE: The BCS rankings are out and they contain a similar USC/Oregon logical anomaly.