BCS national title pretenders

September answered some of our questions regarding the national championship race, weeding out some false title contenders the way author George Martin kills off false kings in "Game of Thrones." Arkansas is a full-on disaster; Oklahoma has become a perennial pretender; and the prematurely highly regarded USC Trojans have been exposed to be as skin-deep as nearby Hollywood.

Only Alabama and Oregon appear to be true royalty -- assuming a recent string of injuries on both teams don't reel them back to the pack.

A few potential false kings still remain, with three teams in particular I can't trust just yet. All of them have revealed flaws they may not be able to conceal through October. Their undoing could come as soon as this weekend, as we begin our manic discussions upon the release of the BCS standings.

West Virginia Mountaineers

Sixty-three. That's the number of points the Mountaineers gave up to Baylor last week. And won. But no team has ever given up as many points as WVU is allowing and gone on to win a national championship. The shaky defense is the reason I can't buy West Virginia as a title contender.

To read what's holding ND, WVU and UGA back in the title race, you must be an ESPN Insider.

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Rod Gilmore

College Football analyst

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Rod Gilmore serves as an ESPN studio analyst on SportsCenter and College Football Live, and provides commentary on ESPN's Friday night game telecasts. He writes regularly for ESPN Insider.