POLL WATCHING: How high will Beavers go?

HOW HIGH WILL the Beavers rise this week in the polls? And the big story this week is there's a new metric to consider -- the first BCS rankings of the season will be unveiled on Sunday night.

Oregon State was predicted by ESPN before Saturday's win over BYU to be slotted ninth when the first BCS rankings of the season are to be unveiled at appx. 5:30 pm PT on Sunday.

Two notes: 1) Recent years have proven one thing over and over -- such projections are sometimes simply flat out wrong. So Oregon State could be higher or lower in the first edition of the BCS. 2) With AP No. 5 West Virginia losing badly this weekend to unranked Texas Tech (a 49-14 beatdown), OSU should jump up at least one spot in the BCS than what it appeared when Saturday's games began. But will they?

Another question is how far AP No. 3 South Carolina fall in the polls. They were narrowly beaten on the road by No. 8 LSU on Saturday -- will they fall far enough for Oregon State to climb over them as well?

In the Coaches' poll, where OSU was ranked No. 14 heading into this weekend, both No. 12 Georgia and No. 13 Clemson were idle. And sometimes a team that is idle is out of sight, out of mind for voters -- and a team right behind them winning that weekend leapfrogs past them. Will that be the case on Sunday for Oregon State?

The fact OSU was a full touchdown underdog on the road after losing their starting quarterback -- but ended up beating BYU 42-24 -- can't hurt their chances.

To sum up the polls, Oregon State entered Saturday's game ranked No. 10 in the AP poll (not tabulated in the BCS), No. 14 in the Coaches' poll, and No. 12 in the Harris Poll.

After some number crunching, poll gazing and a quick look at Drew Wilson-McGrath's abacus and Chad Luther's Magic 8-ball, the early guess here is this: Oregon State will climb one spot in the AP to No. 9, three spots in the Coaches' Poll to No. 11 and two spots in the Harris poll to No. 10.

But where will Oregon State debut in the first 2012 BCS rankings?

That's just hard to predict with any reasonable degree of certitude -- every year prognosticators get some teams wrong.

But we will say the following...

The BCS uses the Harris Poll, the Coaches’ Poll and six computer rankings -- and each counts for one-third of a team's BCS ranking.

The six computer rankings used are: Anderson & Hester, Richard Billingsley, Colley Matrix, Kenneth Massey, Jeff Sagarin and Peter Wolfe.

Before this weekend's games, the Oct. 7 computer computer rankings for OSU and Oregon were as follows:

Anderson & Hester: No. 4 (Oregon was No. 7)

Richard Billingsley: No. 16 (Oregon was No. 1)

Colley Matrix: No. 6 (Oregon was No. 7)

Kenneth Massey: No. 6 (Oregon was No. 8)

Jeff Sagarin: No. 12 (Oregon was No. 6)

Peter Wolfe: First rankings of 2012 season will not be released until Sunday.