Bob Ford | Intruder joins BCS's cozy table

The first edition of this season's Bowl Championship Series standings is out and, nestled near the top among all the usual suspects, you can find the University of South Florida.

Finding USF isn't always that easy, even with the aid of a map of Florida. And finding the Bulls among the elite of college football is somewhat surprising, since they started playing football at USF about a week ago Thursday.

But the computer doesn't lie (that's the next stage of programming), and South Florida is ranked second in the BCS standings, just behind Ohio State. Theoretically, if the 7-0 Buckeyes and the 6-0 Bulls win the remainder of their games, those teams would meet Jan. 7 at the Louisiana Superdome for the national championship. USF continues its trek toward that goal tomorrow night at Rutgers.

The theory of the eventual championship meeting doesn't take into account the stodgy human element in the process, those who vote in the weekly polls. Some of those folks, particularly the coaching traditionalists, might look at one-loss teams such as Louisiana State, Oklahoma, Cal, Oregon and Southern Cal and find one or all more worthy than an upstart Big East program.

The voters could do some serious fudging, and things could get even messier than usual for the BCS mafia during its annual money grab.

Those are worries for later in the season, however. For the moment, it is enough to merely ask the question: the University of South Florida?

The first answer is "Tampa," which, geography majors will note, is closer to Florida's northern border than to its watery southern tip. At the time the school was founded in the mid-1950s, though, it was the southernmost state university, and that's the reason for the name. Sunshine State University and Citrus State University were also considered for the little school built on the abandoned World War II-era airstrip, so, all things considered, it could have been worse.

One thing South Florida isn't these days, by the way, is little. USF is the ninth-largest university in the country, with over 40,000 enrolled students spread over four campuses.