And during that discussion of how Ohio State slipped despite a "mighty victory" I somehow end up being "the contrarian."
No, you get labeled the contrarian because you spend a lot of time on BP playing devil's advocate.
You guys love to knock the Big East, Pac 10, Big 12, ACC teams and talk about the loose rules that govern the SEC, their academic standards and their arrogant conference wide pride -- I do too.
But then you also want to crap on Michigan and the rest of the Big 10 and diminish them in terms of what they accomplish and when their failures fail to float Ohio State's status at the end of the season you want to blame it on Herbie and the talking heads at ESPN.
That's bullshit, pure and simple.
Don't stick your invented garbage down my throat. I don't want to crap on Michigan (now Barwis or QBForce.com, that's another matter). I want them to be strong & respectable to restore pride in what winning the game means, even though I know that means pain and losses as an OSU fan.
Don't paint Herbie into some sort of victim here. He put out an absolutely laughable poll. Not one other AP pollster had OSU below 5, yet he and fellow ESPN entertainer Fowler both had them at 9. It would be ironic if it weren't so typical.
When he was getting ripped apart for it, he appeared briefly on the radio but had no defense for it, so he made an even bigger mess out of it with his "I was half asleep" excuse. Either he lied about the real reason for his vote or he did disrespect his position as a pollster and doesn't deserve one ounce of the defense that you are so earnestly providing in this thread.
SEC!,SEC!, SEC! is not as stupid as many of you seem to think it is. It is an acknowledgement by the collective schools of the fact that any conference team in an OOC/bowl game REPRESENTS the conference.
Another gross misrepresentation of our position. We fully understand the significance of conference success, pride and reputations. That's not what we're trashing.
If Auburn fans want to talk trash, so be it. If LSU, Bama or even Florida fans want to talk about the conference's dominance over the last 5 years, have at it.
We are mocking the idiotic mentality that being roadkill under Auburn's tires (even if the roadkill looked deadly for awhile) earns you bragging rights when they do something your team could not. We mock the onslaught of Vanderbilt or Ole Miss fans who think they have the right to talk trash because of what actually successful programs have accomplished.
Oh, and with less than two minutes to go and the ball in Arkansas hands on the on the OSU 20 which team did you think was going to win the Sugar Bowl?
The way the Bucks went into a shell and let an 18 point lead melt away, almost to the point of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, did not elevate their status.
Hilarious. So now the buckeyes are penalized for losing tight games. OSU has been playing games like that for an entire decade, that's not why Herbstreit placed them at 9.
He placed them there because it is good for his employer's business, the same way it is good for Sportscenter or ESPN Radio ratings to sensationalize the Tat 5 at every waking moment, but all but ignore the far larger scandals with Cam Newton (which weren't just massive but include three separate incidents, two where he was found guilty).
