Week 10 Thread: The one with THAT AP Poll

[Hunter2_1]

That UNC game was wild

[MWil23]

10 hours ago, NateDawg said:

I can’t wait to see the mental gymnastics that the committee spits out to keep Bama at 2 on Tuesday.

“It’s a rivalry game”

[mse326]

3 hours ago, MWil23 said:

14 hours ago, NateDawg said:

I can’t wait to see the mental gymnastics that the committee spits out to keep Bama at 2 on Tuesday.

“It’s a rivalry game”

Since I was the one defending them at 2 I guess I'll chime in here.

1. They did not look good yesterday I am not going to argue otherwise
2. Yes, those games are indeed building up

The question, however, is who should be above them. The only undefeated teams are Oklahoma, who hasn't looked good in a single game this year, and Cincy, who have the SOS issue and they too have had a couple games where they didn't look good against inferior competition. Oregon has the best win of the contenders but also the worst loss. OSU has the best loss but that also happened to be against one of the other contenders for the spot making it hard to put them at 2. MSU got beat pretty hard yesterday and I don't see how you can move them up after that. Bama's loss is a decent loss (if we are going to knock them for what Florida is now rather than at the time we need to do the same with TAMU) and the have a decent win on the resume with Ole Miss. 

So, I'll concede the eye test argument should mostly go away, at least to the point it shouldn't trump a definitely better resume, but I don't see anyone with a resume that is really better. MSU was that team last week, but is there one now?

[NateDawg]

2 minutes ago, mse326 said:

Since I was the one defending them at 2 I guess I'll chime in here.

1. They did not look good yesterday I am not going to argue otherwise
2. Yes, those games are indeed building up

The question, however, is who should be above them. The only undefeated teams are Oklahoma, who hasn't looked good in a single game this year, and Cincy, who have the SOS issue and they too have had a couple games where they didn't look good against inferior competition. Oregon has the best win of the contenders but also the worst loss. OSU has the best loss but that also happened to be against one of the other contenders for the spot making it hard to put them at 2. MSU got beat pretty hard yesterday and I don't see how you can move them up after that. Bama's loss is a decent loss (if we are going to knock them for what Florida is now rather than at the time we need to do the same with TAMU) and the have a decent win on the resume with Ole Miss. 

So, I'll concede the eye test argument should mostly go away, at least to the point it shouldn't trump a definitely better resume, but I don't see anyone with a resume that is really better. MSU was that team last week, but is there one now?

My argument is that if you have a bunch of question mark teams past UGA, you have an undefeated Cincinnati with a win over Notre Dame, and an undefeated Oklahoma school. UC has the best win aside from the Ducks. Not losing a game is an easy tiebreaker to me. Not saying I think Oklahoma is a top-five team necessarily. But maybe let things play out. I’m not really sure what Alabama is being rewarded for at this point. It would be hard for me to even put Alabama at the top of the one most teams right now. You are right though, as stated, not really very many great options directly behind Georgia. It seems to me that definitely has just drawn a line in the sand but Alabama is Alabama and they get credit as such here. When there has been years where they work early and don’t show the deficiencies they have, I have no problem with I’m getting the benefit of the doubt considering their dominance the past decade plus. But this year they just don’t seem to be that team earning that benefit. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because things will be decided when they play Georgia, assuming they don’t lose between now and then.

[MWil23]

This is also the second time a now sub .500 team has taken Bama to the wire (Florida and LSU). 

[ronjon1990]

32 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

This is also the second time a now sub .500 team has taken Bama to the wire (Florida and LSU). 

The committee will brush it off as the SEC being the only conference in the country to eat itself alive and then point to the inflated rankings of decent teams in the SEC and say "SeE wE tOlD yOu"

[CWood21]

1 hour ago, mse326 said:

Since I was the one defending them at 2 I guess I'll chime in here.

1. They did not look good yesterday I am not going to argue otherwise
2. Yes, those games are indeed building up

The question, however, is who should be above them. The only undefeated teams are Oklahoma, who hasn't looked good in a single game this year, and Cincy, who have the SOS issue and they too have had a couple games where they didn't look good against inferior competition. Oregon has the best win of the contenders but also the worst loss. OSU has the best loss but that also happened to be against one of the other contenders for the spot making it hard to put them at 2. MSU got beat pretty hard yesterday and I don't see how you can move them up after that. Bama's loss is a decent loss (if we are going to knock them for what Florida is now rather than at the time we need to do the same with TAMU) and the have a decent win on the resume with Ole Miss. 

So, I'll concede the eye test argument should mostly go away, at least to the point it shouldn't trump a definitely better resume, but I don't see anyone with a resume that is really better. MSU was that team last week, but is there one now?

Aside from Alabama being Alabama, what have they done that's been that impressive?  Right now, their best wins are against Miami (5-4), Ole Miss (7-2), Florida (4-5), and Tennessee (5-4).  And they have a "good" loss against A&M.  Alabama hasn't been overly impressive, and it looks like one of the worse Alabama teams in years.  If Alabama didn't come into the year as the #1 team, I don't think we'd be talking about them as highly as we are now.  And that's not saying I think there's a clear cut #2.  I think you could make an argument for 4.5ish teams right now.

Oregon clearly holds the best win of the bunch by beating Ohio State, so by virtue of H2H they probably deserve to be ahead of Ohio State.  The second best win probably is a tie between Alabama (vs Ole Miss) and Ohio State (vs Penn State).  Oklahoma's best win so far is Texas, which is a distant fourth among these teams.  But they're also the only team without a loss on the season.  So the committee is essentially penalizing Oklahoma for their poor schedule, and equally poor performance over that same schedule.  IF they were going to be consistent with their rankings, I think it'd be Oregon at 2, Ohio State at 3, and then Alabama at 4.  But what the committee has said so far is that Alabama is CLEARLY better then Ohio State and Oregon.  I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment.

[Supersuavesky]

 I hate everything.

[MikeT14]

Fuente better not be next. 

[Hunter2_1]

On 11/7/2021 at 5:04 PM, MWil23 said:

This is also the second time a now sub .500 team has taken Bama to the wire (Florida and LSU). 

With those accolades, I can see ESPN ranking them 2nd!