I'm not sure why it doesn't make sense. I don't recall anyone on this board saying OSU should drop back when we were Tresselballing our way to boring wins over inferior teams. All that mattered was we won.
If you're suggesting we should leap frog them from our couch that makes even less sense to me.
What "makes sense" is rather subjective. We could make a variety of arguments for Ohio State or Clemson to be ranked higher, however the issue here is consistency.
The arguments used to drop us early in the season somehow only apply to us.
If we beat Buffalo 40-20, we're over-rated.
If Georgia beats Tennessee in over-time, it's "taking care of business and just winning".
If Clemson comes back against a junk Boston College, it's "taking care of business and just winning".
Well, the voters can't honestly and logically apply one of those standards one week and a different standard the next week.
Especially since they don't even line up. We were never behind to Buffalo. We simply didn't have a big enough blowout victory. Yet Georgia and Clemson struggled significantly and had to come back in the 4th quarter. They were very much in danger of losing those games to opponents they were expected to utterly demolish.
- We were jumped by Clemson because we "only" beat Buffalo by 20 points while Clemson beat a (then) highly ranked Georgia by 3 points.
- By that same token, Georgia should have dropped after their poor overtime game against a woefully terrible Tennessee; but they didn't.
- By that same token, Clemson should have been punished for a poor performance against a woeful Boston College; but they weren't.
- By that same token, jumping Clemson based on beating a clearly over-rated Georgia should have been corrected by now; but it hasn't been.
- Nebraska and Wisconsin continue to be under-rated, while Florida / Georgia / South Carolina continue to be over-rated.
Florida shouldn't even be in the top-25 - with 2 losses and no wins worth mentioning (Kentucky, Ark, and Tenn -- none of whom have a single win against another BCS school).
South Carolina and Nebraska should be roughly equivalent somewhere in the middle of the pack. SC lost to an over-rated Georgia with no win wins worth mentioning, and remains right around #10; whereas Nebraska has lost to top-10 UCLA and similarly no wins to hang their hat on. Both have performed consistently overall**, but how in hell is SC ranked #9 by the Coaches ??
Georgia and Wisconsin belong in the 20-25 range at best. Georgia's blowout loss to Missouri wasn't a fluke, they seriously struggled against Tennessee as well.
I don't buy the injury excuse either -- we've been without a whole slew of key players for various games this year. Miller, Hyde, Roby, Washington, Bryant, Hall, Schutt ... that's just off the top of my head. Yet missing all those players, including 2 of our best players on offense for 3 games, hasn't kept us from winning or put us in a difficult situation. You don't see any Ohio State fans claiming we struggled against Northwestern because we were missing our most consistent DB in a secondary with poor depth. Moreover, Georgia had those players when they nearly blew it against Tennessee.
Nor was it the lack of Gurley or Bennet -- they didn't have a problem running or finding open receivers. They got behind their defense gave up 21 first half points, and they couldn't come back because their Heisman candidate made 3 turnovers - 2 interceptions (entirely on him) in the 4th quarter and a fumble returned for a TD in the 2nd quarter.
**We could talk about Nebraska's inconsistent defense, but even so it hasn't got them in trouble since giving up 2 4th-quarter touchdowns against Wyoming (in which Wyoming never had the lead in the 2nd half). Even then, SC has given up 2 4th-quarter touchdowns against Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and UCF... raising some serious questions about their own defense' ability to stay in ball games in the 2nd half (which is, incidentally, how Georgia beat them).
