Might not even matter. Could be premature. Might not be worth all the fuss.

The first official Bowl Championship Series Standings won't be released until Oct. 17.

Understandably, Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer had more important matters on his mind this week than worrying how the Vols project in the BCS standings.

"Right now we're just worried about Georgia. ... You're talking about things that might happen,'' Fulmer said earlier this week when asked about the new-look BCS system. "We play Georgia Saturday and that's plenty to work on. I haven't paid any attention to the ratings or polls.

"I'm familiar with it, but I'm not concerned with it right now.''

With good reason; if the Vols lose to the Bulldogs, B-C-S are three letters that might as well fall out of the Tennessee football vocabulary.

Words like "Peach,'' "Capital One,'' "Cotton'' and "Outback,'' would replace "BCS" when talk turned to where the Vols are headed in the postseason.

A win over Georgia, however, sets up the possibility of a three-way tie for the SEC East title and a trip to the SEC championship game.

Such a tie would most likely occur should the Vols, Georgia and Florida all end up with 6-2 SEC records.

UT still must play Alabama. Georgia and Florida still meet, and the Bulldogs also play Auburn while the Gators have LSU on the schedule.

Plenty of speculation is still on the table, but this much we know:

In the case of a two-way tie, head-to-head determines the champion.

In the case of a three-way tie, the BCS rankings will kick in. That's partly because UT, Florida and Georgia don't have a common SEC West opponent.

As of now, a three-way tie would seem to bode well for Georgia, even if the Bulldogs lose to Tennessee today (by a reasonably close margin).

Of course, things could change quickly, particularly if Georgia gets blown out by Auburn or loses to Georgia Tech.

The Gators are the wild card. They still control their destiny and should they win the remainder of their conference games will capture the SEC East.

Tennessee must hope for another Florida conference loss while beating Georgia, Alabama and a handful of conference creampuffs to close the season atop the SEC without the BCS rankings coming into play.

Such speculation is what makes college football so unique. There's always something to project or debate.

At the same time, diehard fans hoping to keep up with the BCS and computer rankings had better be ready for some heavy-duty mathematics.

It's hard to predict exactly what the computers will do with the result of the Tennessee-Notre Dame game or the Florida-Florida State contest.

It's even harder sometimes to predict the line of reasoning used by the people who vote in the Harris and coaches' polls.

For now, Fulmer's got it right: Beat Georgia and worry about details later.

But as Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville could attest after his Tigers got shut out of the national title game after going 13-0 last season, those decimal points and BCS details will still be waiting.

"After we got left out last year, we saw how unfair those polls are,'' Tuberville said Wednesday. "(But) that's the only system we have.''

Auburn, incidentally, has won 19 of its past 20 games and is ranked no higher than 17th (Billingsley computer) by any of the BCS components.

Go figure.