AUBURN, Ala. — This time around, Auburn controls its destiny.
Auburn jumped from fourth to first in the Bowl Championship Series standings that were released Sunday night. The Tigers improved to 8-0 on Saturday with a 24-17 win over previously undefeated LSU at Jordan-Hare Stadium, and the Tigers benefited from Oklahoma, last week’s No. 1 in the BCS, losing Saturday night at Missouri.
“This doesn’t change anything for us,” Auburn coach Gene Chizik said. “It doesn’t change the way we prepare. It doesn’t change the way we talk to our team. This is a step-by-step, day-by-day process.
“We are not going to talk about where we are ranking-wise. We are not going to talk about being 8-0. We are going to talk about Ole Miss.”
BCS STANDINGS1. Auburn2. Oregon3. Boise State4. TCU5. Michigan State6. Missouri7. Alabama8. Utah9. Oklahoma10. Wisconsin
The Tigers become the fifth Southeastern Conference team to hold the top spot in the BCS since its inception in 1998, joining Tennessee, LSU, Florida and Alabama.
Auburn was followed on the new BCS list by Oregon, Boise State, TCU and Michigan State. Missouri was sixth after its upset of the Sooners, while Alabama was seventh after its 41-10 thrashing of Tennessee.
Alabama, which hosts Auburn on Nov. 26 in what’s shaping up as a monumental Iron Bowl, led the Volunteers 13-10 at halftime and broke the game open with 200 yards and three touchdowns in the third quarter.
“Our focus this week was to try to distinguish ourselves by playing to a higher standard,” Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said. “In the second half, we did that.”
The Tide will not practice today or Friday during their off week that precedes next week’s trip to LSU, which is No. 12 in the BCS.
Chizik was Auburn’s defensive coordinator in 2004, when the Tigers were victims of college football history. Southern Cal and Oklahoma became the first tandem ever to get ranked 1-2 in the preseason polls and hold their respective positions throughout the year.
Auburn went 13-0 in ’04 and finished 8-0 in SEC play with an average victory margin of 18.9 points, but the Tigers only got to No. 3 in the BCS standings. USC routed the Sooners in the Orange Bowl to win the BCS crown, which the Trojans had to vacate earlier this year as the result of NCAA sanctions.
That Auburn team had four first-round NFL draft picks, but it did not have Cam Newton, who on Saturday broke the single-season record for rushing yards by an SEC quarterback. Newton rushed for 217 yards against LSU and now has 1,077, surpassing the 1,006 Auburn’s Jimmy Sidle amassed in 1963.
Though he has just played eight games, Newton owns five of the top 50 rushing performances in school history.
“Anybody who has watched us play can see that Cameron is very special,” Chizik said. “Our football team has really evolved over the last seven or eight weeks because we’re learning more week by week what we can do with Cameron. We’ll continue to evolve.
“We certainly haven’t arrived. We’re not even close, but it’s been great to watch Cameron week by week become an exceptional football player.”
McElroy is king
Alabama’s Greg McElroy now occupies a place in the SEC record books as the top quarterback in terms of winning percentage, which requires a minimum of 22 starts. McElroy is 21-1 (.955) as the Crimson Tide starter, ranking ahead of former Alabama quarterback Jay Barker (35-2-1 for a percentage of .934) and former Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel (32-3-1 for .903).