The good news: football didn’t lose this week.

The bad news: you probably won’t say that for the rest of the season.

The major headline from this weekend in college football was Oregon State’s dramatic 33-31 victory over Southern California. Sparked by receiver Sammie Stroughter’s beautiful punt return for a touchdown, four USC turnovers and a rowdy home crowd, the Beavers jumped out to a 23-point lead against the Trojans. As always, USC battled back, but Oregon State defensive end Jeff Van Orsow batted down USC quarterback John David Booty’s two-point conversion attempt with seven seconds left to ice the win.

Given Oregon State’s come-from-ahead victory, a 0-12 season is now all but certain for Stanford. The optimistic had thought that Stanford could squeak past the Beavers, a traditional Pac-10 also-ran. But Oregon State will be playing with a new level of passion and confidence the rest of the way — it shouldn’t be especially close in the new stadium on Nov. 18.

With a visit from USC and trips to surprisingly resurgent Washington and Berkeley left on the schedule, I have to predict the Cardinal lose by a combined 100 points the rest of the way.

I’m sure not too many of you were watching this one on your satellite televisions, but Temple knocked off Bowling Green 28-14 on Saturday for its first win since 2004. The significance? Stanford now joins Duke and Florida International as the only winless football programs in the nation.

Speaking of Duke — this is not a football thought but let’s take a quick look at the preseason men’s basketball coaches poll. If Stanford can get past San Jose State and Air Force at home on Nov. 14 and 15, the team will travel to Kansas City over Thanksgiving break to face Duke, who enters the season at No. 11. Florida, North Carolina, and Kansas are the top three and UCLA, Arizona and Washington represent the Pac-10 at numbers 5, 10 and 16, respectively. Gonzaga, who visits in February, is 26th, and Nevada, Trent Johnson’s old school, is No. 25. Stanford didn’t receive a single vote.

Back to football, USC’s loss guaranteed yet another controversy in selecting the BCS Championship Game participants. The winner of the colossal Ohio State-Michigan tilt (which yours truly might just be covering for the Daily) is guaranteed one slot (barring a major upset before then, of course), but who will line up opposite them? In this week’s BCS standings No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Michigan have .99 and .97 points, while a pack of West Virginia, Florida, Louisville, Auburn, Texas, USC, Notre Dame, Cal and Tennessee and Rutgers follow, in that order, each with .70 to .79 points.

West Virginia, Louisville and Rutgers, all undefeated, will each play each other. If one of those three finishes the season undefeated, they will have a strong argument for a berth in the BCS Championship Game — as will Florida and Texas if they go on to win their respective conference title games. Michigan and Ohio State have such a huge lead on the field (and such love from the computers) that the loser of that game might just back its way into a rematch.

On the West Coast, USC has two opportunities to impress with California and Notre Dame upcoming.

So who gets in?

After looking way too long at the numbers, here’s my take as to the pecking order: undefeated Ohio State/Michigan, Florida, one-loss Ohio State/Michigan, West Virginia/Louisville/Rutgers, USC, Texas.

So, for example, USC would need Florida and the Big East triumvirate to all lose, and either Michigan or Ohio State to lose twice to sneak back into the national title game.

The problem for Stanford? USC knows it has a long climb and knows that it needs to show it is dominant as ever to climb in the polls. The Trojans have the playmakers and, after last week, the anger and motivation to pile on score after score on hapless Stanford. I think USC wins by over 40. And it would be more without these new game-shortening clock rules, or if Pete Carroll and Walt Harris weren’t good friends.

Daniel Novinson is a junior studying public policy and economics. Email him at dannovi@stanford.edu.