To be clear up front, there is no such thing as a bad weekend of football in late November; there are far too many rivalries, grudges, streaks, collapses and potential surprises to even consider the possibility. When there are this few games left -- and for some teams, probably none left at all -- you have to make a point of savoring them all.

But when BCS proponents trot out the line, "every week is a playoff," it is safe to say this is not the kind of week they have in mind, at least where the six unbeaten and two one-loss teams in the BCS top 10 are concerned:

This Week at the Top of the BCS Standings
1. Florida: – 45 vs Fla. International
2. Alabama: vs Chattanooga (No line)
3. Texas: – 26 vs Kansas
4. TCU: –31 at Wyoming
5. Cincinnati: Off
6. Boise State: –23 at Utah State (Fri.)
7. Georgia Tech: Off
9. Pittsburgh: Off

In fact, throughout this week's BCS top 25, there's only one game between ranked teams (No. 25 California at No. 17 Stanford), which doesn't have a direct impact on the Pac-10 title race without some dominoes falling at the top of the conference. Not including the Cardinal, seven-point home favorites over Cal, there are only four ranked teams favored by less than 10 points: LSU (+4 at Ole Miss), Oregon (–6 at Arizona), Penn State (–3 at Michigan State) and Wisconsin (–7 at Northwestern).

And only one of those games, Oregon at Arizona, has any chance of impacting a conference championship race, because the Pac-10 is the only one of the "Big Six" races still burning -- the others are either settled (Ohio State in the Big Ten) or effectively settled until "Championship Saturday" in two weeks, when the Big East (Cincinnati at Pittsburgh), ACC (Georgia Tech vs. Clemson or Boston College), Big 12 (Texas vs. the winner of Kansas State/Nebraska) and of course SEC (Alabama vs. Florida) will stage their championship games among participants that have effectively locked in their positions already. Barring a colossal, inconceivable upset -- which wouldn't even affect any of the major conference championship pictures, they're so etched in stone at this point -- it's cruise control at the top.

That leaves Oregon at (unranked) Arizona, the only two teams remaining in the Pac-10 that still control their own destiny for the conference championship, as the only thing resembling a "playoff." With its first big road win of the season in Tucson, Oregon can put itself in a position to lock up the automatic Rose Bowl bid with a win over Oregon State on Dec. 3; with the biggest win in Mike Stoops' tenure, the Wildcats can put themselves in the driver's seat with dates at Arizona State and USC still in front of them, opening the Stanford and Oregon State in a convoluted tiebreaker scenario if the 'Cats drop one of their last two. The Pac-10 is the one league heating up while the rest simmer in anticipation of their one big weekend.

A huge portion of the country is going to miss Arizona-Oregon, by the way, which takes a second seat to Texas-Kansas over a vast swath of flyover territory, as well as Cal-Stanford, which appears on the little-seen Versus network -- at the same time as Arizona-Oregon, just to make sure even Pac-10 fans can't get their fill of both. It's a good thing there's no playoff around to give Ohio State an opportunity to play for seeding or add national title implications to the convoluted and overwhelmingly West Coast-focused Pac-10 race. That would really devalue the whole operation, you know?