I hesitate to bring this up....but......your research and the results that show some evidence of - call it....underachieving -could be an explanation for the bias you all feel toward the Bucks by the media and other fan bases. Perhaps....perhaps it is an opinion formed by their observing the same failures, the same inability to close the deal over so many years.
I guess I am saying that one hypothetical explanation for the "bias" is that third parties have in some sense processed the same stats that Jeff so meticulously compiled and have come up with an opinion that is unfavorable as it relates to your ability to close the deal. Everyone loves dotting the i, TBDBITL, your history, etc....but you get less than you think you deserve insofar as respect for our team's ability to win. Maybe there is a correlation.
I do not mean to offend anybody by this, but as someone growing up in non-Big 10 territory, I did not follow you much at all, and what I did seem to remember is how you would seem to lose to either Michigan or the PAc 10 Rose Bowl Rep every year. Now, I know that you did not lose every year. I am not even saying that my recollection is factually correct. I am just saying that to the extent I thought about an "image" I had of Ohio State regarding football, it was that you always had good teams that lost at the end of the year. That was not my "bias", as I had no real interest in big 10 football at all. Perhaps I picked it up from the sports broadcasts where they said "It happened again" after The Game or a Rose Bowl. It was admittedly not a marginally informed view, as I did not follow your seasons closely or at all, nor did I have a vivid memory of your many impressive wins.
Again, as Jeff is being down right honest here, I shared what was my non-interested impression of the program that I had in the 70s through the 90s. Perhaps the Cooper years and the recent three big disappointment games have given you a rep that is worse than it should be. But it is also just possible that the bias is not as arbitrary as it seems when you break it down like Jeff did.
I do know this. Beat Texas and come out smoking with TP next year and who knows what will happen. The whole image thing is so short term memory related it is amusing. Win a MNC or big bowl game and it is forgotten. Forget the past losses, you are about to have three years of outstanding successes that should wipe clean the bias of even the most jaded fan. After all, Florida is hardly a long term success. "Wait till next year!" was our cry. That changed in just two decades. Now we get the benefit of the doubt because we stepped up big in big games recently.
The fix starts with Texas.
