In the wake of Shakeout Saturday, several members of the BCS Top 10 bit the dust. Many previously unbeaten or one-loss teams like Louisville, Texas, California, and Auburn all fell out of contention for the National Championship Game.

Now that we head down the home stretch in the 2006 college football season, only six teams realistically have a shot at playing for the national title. Here they are, in the order they should be ranked this week:

1. Ohio State
2. Michigan
3. Florida
4. Southern Cal
5. Arkansas
6. Notre Dame

Fortunately for the BCS, the participants in this year's championship game will again be decided on the field. Let's analyze how that will happen:

Arkansas probably has the hardest case to make and maybe the toughest row to hoe. Like it or not, their double-digit loss to Southern Cal in the first game of the season really put them behind the 8-ball in getting back into title contention. However, if they beat Mississippi State, LSU, and then Florida in the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta, they will deserve a shot at it all IF Southern Cal stumbles along the way. If Southern Cal runs the table, however, there is no way the Razorbacks will be picked to play for the title over the Trojans, simply due to their head-to-head results, and that is as it should be.

Notre Dame, always the darling of the media, has to beat Army and Southern Cal to claim their chance at a national title shot. If they do that, they will most likely get the slot unless Florida wins out. The overall strength of the SEC ought to trump Notre Dame's weak schedule that is laced with patsies, as it is every season.

Southern Cal has three big games remaining, California, which will surely bounce back from their loss at Arizona, Notre Dame, and UCLA, with all of them basically being home games, even though they will play UCLA in the Rose Bowl Stadium across town. If they win all three, it will be hard to keep them out of the title game. The question then becomes whether their loss at Oregon State is viewed as worse than Florida's loss at Auburn.

Florida most likely is the only team outside of the winner of the Ohio State-Michigan game that truly has its destiny in its own hands. It would be a huge feather in Head Coach Urban Meyer's cap to get his Gators into the title game. If he were to win it all, he might even make the jump to the NFL, as he would have little else to prove in Gainesville and his meteoric rise in the coaching ranks would make him very attractive to many NFL teams, perhaps the Miami Dolphins for one. They only have what will most likely be easy games left against Western Carolina and Florida State in the regular season, and then will most likely face Arkansas in the SEC title game in Atlanta.

Of course the winner of the Ohio State-Michigan game this coming Saturday is the odds-on favorite to win the national title. Will the loser get a rematch in Arizona? I just can't see that happening. The clamor from fans, coaches, media, etc., would be too great to make it an all-Big 10 rematch for the national championship. On top of that, the Rose Bowl will most definitely want the loser of this game to come to Pasadena. The politics of things will most likely keep the loser from having a shot at a rematch, even though that might be deserved.

Besides the loser of the Ohio-State-Michigan game being out of title contention, obviously the loser of the Southern Cal-Notre Dame game falls out as well. The same goes for the loser of the Florida-Arkansas SEC Championship Game in Atlanta.

Thus, your national title this year will be settled as it should be, on the field. The Ohio State-Michigan winner will play either the Southern Cal-Notre Dame winner or the Florida-Arkansas winner, assuming the winners of those games win all their other remaining games.

Since Arkansas is the weakest name with the least star power on the national scene, it will be very hard for them to get into the title game over the Southern Cal-Notre Dame winner, despite the strength of the Southeastern Conference and their dominance of the SEC Western Division so far, in addition to their big wins over South Carolina and Tennessee.

The real rub is going to come if Florida runs the table and is denied a title shot. Is the Southern Cal-Notre Dame winner more deserving than the Gators? Florida's victories at Tennessee and over LSU are their biggest wins. They would certainly deserve to be in the national title game over Notre Dame, but if Southern Cal were to whip both California and Notre Dame down the stretch, the bias for Pac-10 teams might result in the SEC being frozen out of national title contention again, just as Auburn was previously.

One of the weaknesses that still exists in the BCS formula is not taking into account strength of schedule adequately. It is somewhat measured by the computers, but strength of schedule ought still be a separate specific component of the BCS rankings again, as it once was. How do you measure the overall strength of the SEC vs. the Pac-10 vs. the Big 10? Since it is settled in everyone's mind that the SEC is the nation's strongest conference, year-in and year-out, there needs to be a strength of schedule component added back into the mix outside of the polls and computer rankings to make things fairer in the overall BCS rankings.

By the way, spare me any talk at all that a Big East team, even Rutgers if they go undefeated, deserves to be in the national title game. That conference simply isn't in the same league as the big boys. They may still deserve to participate in the BCS, but it will be rare that any of that conference's members are strong enough to compete in any other league.