When the first Bowl Championship Series standings are released today, it will be much more interesting to look at the bottom than the top.

Oklahoma will be No. 1 and the winner of the Miami-Virginia Tech game on Nov. 1 will also have a clear shot into the Sugar Bowl for the national title.

The big question is where the other two undefeated teams will be and whether they can play in a major bowl.

Northern Illinois is expected to be No. 10 in the first BCS standings, while TCU will be lucky to make the top 15, according to BCS expert Jerry Palm.

"In December, if we're able to win all our ballgames then we'll have something to talk about," TCU coach Gary Patterson said Sunday. "If we're able to pull it off, then we'll have an argument."

The BCS was set up by college football's six biggest conferences before the 1998 season to determine a national champion without a playoff system, instead using polls, computer rankings, schedule strength, losses and bonus points to determine the teams that play for the title.

Oklahoma, Miami and Virginia Tech figure to be the top three teams, according to Palm, and are the leading contenders right now for the Sugar Bowl.

Focus on the system

While the system never was supposed to do anything other than determine the top two teams to play in a national championship game heading into the bowls, there has been a lot of focus this year on how teams are picked for the other three bowls.

Teams from outside the Pac-10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big East and Big Ten have been on a public relations push to improve access to bowls that pay out about $13 million a team.

Right now, a team has to be in the top six to guarantee a bid and top 12 to be eligible. Because of the schedules they play, Northern Illinois and TCU have no shot for the automatic bid and must hope they can stay eligible.

"Certainly for a program like ours it would be a big deal," said Northern Illinois coach Joe Novak, who lost 23 straight games early in his tenure. "It would be a big deal for anybody. There's a lot of football to go before it could happen, but if a team like ours goes undefeated, playing three BCS teams, we deserve a shot in the mix."

And they should get one. With all the pressure being put on by the smaller schools, the BCS will have a hard time forcing an undefeated team to play in the Motor City Bowl this year.

"I've never been to a bad bowl game," Patterson said. "Obviously, for our kids it probably affects them more than anyone else because kids have dreams. We can't worry about things we have no control of."

That will be a tough test for Patterson and Novak. Previous teams in this situation haven't been so successful at doing that.

In 2001, BYU started 12-0 and had hopes of playing in a major bowl but lost 72-45 to Hawaii in the season finale. The previous year, TCU started 7-0 and reached the top 10 before a 27-24 loss to San Jose State.

In 1998, Tulane went undefeated but could only play in the Liberty Bowl because it was ranked 11th in the BCS standings.