The first Bowl Championship Series standings of the season are released, and that takes us one step closer to Selection Sunday.

There’s still half a season to be played, but now bowl projections and possible pairings can be discussed without the Way Too Early prefix. Although really, anything prior to the last week of the season is still Too Early, if history is any indication.

Let’s check the first standings:

1. LSU Tigers
2. Alabama Crimson Tide
3. Oklahoma Sooners
4. Oklahoma State Cowboys
5. Boise State Broncos
6. Wisconsin Badgers
7. Clemson Tigers
8. Stanford Cardinal
9. Arkansas Razorbacks
10. Oregon Ducks
11. Kansas State Wildcats
12. Virginia Tech Hokies
13. Nebraska Cornhuskers
14. South Carolina Gamecocks
15. West Virginia Mountaineers
16. Michigan State Spartans
17. Texas A&M Aggies
18. Michigan Wolverines
19. Houston Cougars
20. Auburn Tigers
21. Penn State Nittany Lions
22. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
23. Illinois Fighting Illini
24. Texas Longhorns
25. Washington Huskies

That’s six teams from the Big Ten, five from the SEC, three from the ACC and one from the Big East.

On the Capital One Bowl front, that means there are a lot of options to choose the right match-up. We’d be choosing from everyone except LSU and Alabama on the SEC side and everyone but Wisconsin (and likely Nebraska) on the Big Ten side.

Things are even more wide open on the ACC side. Virginia Tech is right at #12 and could be on the verge of a BCS berth, but there are a number of teams that could snatch that spot. The remaining ranked team in the conference is Georgia Tech. With West Virginia as the only ranked team in the Big East and (at the moment) presumptive champion, our choices may not be dictated by the rankings so much as other factors like records and head-to-head wins.

We’ll go more in depth on the what-ifs tomorrow.