I won't try and get too confusing with details and numbers, but to give people the basic understanding of how the BCS works, you don't have many opportunities to make up a lot of ground on teams with tougher schedules. But the first week is an opportunity for the primary polls that do pre-season rankings to get "re-calibrated" after week one, at which point they go forward with teams only dropping if they lose a game and almost never leapfrogging other teams. Other later polls (like the Harris poll) are made up of people that use those pre-season polls (that were re-calibrated after week one) into their beginning polls a few weeks into the season anyway. So the re-calibration week is the vital time for teams ranked #8-#11 (who likely won't have the opportunity to pass the other teams without a lot of things going right for them and wrong for others) to get re-calibrated into the top 7 so they have at least a realistic statistical shot.
Ducks going against another Division I-A opponent would have gotten all of the scheduling credit for their margin of victory since it wasn't a Division I-AA team like Portland State or like Western Kentucky or Eastern Illinois. So they would have gotten a LOT of publicity if they could chase a record since it was two Div IA teams facing each other. After a 59-0 halftime lead the NCAA Div I-A record of 103-0 was actually in jeopardy (which it almost never is because these blowouts don't happen against big schools facing each other). If Chip Kelly could have put the pedal to the floor in the 2nd half, he had an opportunity to get up into the 80s or 90s at worst and begin to get talks going about it and have ESPN breaking into coverage, etc.. It would have allowed the Ducks to be highlighted on every halftime update around the nation and Sportscenter and the tons of other media would have been hyping nearly breaking a 60-some year old record. This would have caused a buzz in the back of voters minds when they recalibrate the polls next week.
As it stands, they'll obviously leapfrog the loser of BSU/VTech into 10th, but I don't see it going much beyond that since they didn't make one national highlight reel that I saw, and the voters won't do more than see they won and leave them there. As where had they been featured every 10 minutes on Sportscenter for scoring 90-something to 0, then they would have easily leapfrogged Iowa and Nebraska (who played junior college teams and only won by 30 pts), and #7 Oklahoma who struggled and only won by a 7 pts against an unranked WAC team. So they would have at least slid up to 7. Not sure they could have passed TCU with them beating the Beavs. But it would have been close with enough publicity. Too bad Chip had to play the "good winner" mentality and not think about the unique situation that team was in given the score and their spot in the polls.
