In a perfect world, the Doc would be given carte blanche to publicly torch the Bowl Championship Series in effigy and institute the elaborate, double-elimination battle royale of his dreams. But we live in the world we live in, so each Sunday the Doc looks at what the new BCS numbers mean for the rest of the season. Rooting interest: chaos. Always chaos.

We've got a month and a half and a lot of surprises to go, here, so the least interesting thing about the year's first Official Poll of the People is who's No. 1. Or No. 2. They're exactly the same as the human polls, anyway: Texas and Alabama. They're your pole sitters.

It's much more fascinating to judge just how wildly the computer aggregates differ at this point in the year from the sum total of puny human minds. Penn State, for example, is one of the Big Three undefeated teams at the top right now, and right on Alabama's heels for the No. 2 spot in the Harris and Coaches polls (and the AP poll, too, but the writers opted out of the BCS process, the curs, and so are dead to us). To the computers, the Lions are No. 7, behind Oklahoma State and one-loss Oklahoma, Ohio State and Georgia. Not one single Official Algorithm ranks PSU higher than fifth (Anderson & Hester), and one has the Lions as low as No. 11 (Peter Wolfe). You may be impressed by all the shiny blowouts -- Penn State is schooling people by a national-best 33 points per game -- but the computers aren't allowed to take margin of victory into account.

Instead, they see an average strength of schedule (by their published calculations) somewhere in the low 90s and a "best win" over Oregon State and spit out a number that's closer to what the flesh-and-bloods think of, say, Boise State or TCU. Both of whom the computers kind of like, by the way.

Other vast chasms between human and computer opinions: Oklahoma State, No. 8 in the human polls but No. 3 according to the machines; USC, a top five team in the human polls but tenth (behind Utah and Boise State) in the computer versions, which obviously have not seen the recruiting rankings; Florida, sixth and seventh, respectively, by the humans but No. 12 by the computers, and no higher than eighth in any of them; LSU, No. 11 by the people but tied (with Northwestern) for No. 19 by the machines; South Florida, which cracks both human polls' top 15 but is way down at No. 23 in the computer polls; and Kansas, whose offensive prowess in a loss to Oklahoma didn't even knock the Jayhawks out of the humans' top 20, but who also don't appear in five of the six computer top 25s at all.

Sitting pretty. Texas has a substantial lead in every poll, and Alabama a substantial enough lead over Penn State in the computer versions, that the Horns and Tide look like they're in win-and-in mode. Even if Penn State continues its path of destruction through the Big Ten, the Big 12 and SEC have been getting lots of slobbering kisses as the strongest conferences all season and won't yield their conference champions after "Championship Weekend," when Penn State will just be watching, anyway. Replace Texas with Oklahoma State or Texas Tech if either manages to upset UT, beat the other, beat Oklahoma and run the table.

Among the one-loss teams, Oklahoma is in a dead heat with USC in the human polls and ahead of the Trojans in every single computer poll, although but the Sooners also need Texas to lose twice to avoid the curse of "didn't even win their own division." SC is set to cruise through the rest of the Pac-10, where its toughest opponent is its own inconsistent psyche, but if OU manages to win out (which means beating Texas Tech and Oklahoma State), even without winning the Big 12, the computers will still favor the Sooners, and the humans will have to make some kind of indefensible leap in logic to move the Trojans ahead with no remaining ranked teams on their schedule.

A little help? Penn State can't catch Texas or Alabama on its schedule alone and needs one of those two to lose to move into the top two. And god bless them, Ohio State is trucking along, just waiting for the Big 12 South to shake itself out. If the Buckeyes beat Penn State Saturday, and the Florida-Georgia winner in two weeks should happen to drop another one along the way, OSU is right in the mix again.

For chaos' sake. The undefeated triumverate in the Big 12 South (Texas, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech) offers plenty of opportunities to throw the entire affair into a big morass, most obviously by beating one another in an indecipherable A > B and B > C but C > A chain. If any of those three does come out of the regular season unscathed, there's always Kansas or Missouri lurking in the conference championship -- imagine coming to Dec. 7 with Texas, Oklahoma and the Texas Tech/Oklahoma State winner all with one loss to one of the other two, and none of them as conference champion, but with Oklahoma possessing the mythical "momentum." Do you dare take the Sooners over Texas? Or do you just set the Big 12 aside in favor of USC and/or whoever upsets Alabama in the SEC title game? If Oklahoma State manages to take out Texas Saturday in Austin, it's going to be like entering the Labyrinthe, only without the muppets (David Bowie, of course, will still be there).