Everyone has a top 4 with OSU, UM, PSU and Minny, in some order.
I'm obviously accustomed to you being overly hesitant to rank tOSU #1 so I was more curious why you made such a distinction between Minnesota and the others.
I think that your statement here is somewhat misleading because it makes it sound like the order is up in the air for all four and it isn't. There are 12 votes so far:
- All 12 votes for tOSU.
- Eight votes for M, two each for PSU/MN.
- Two votes for M, five each for PSU/MN.
- Two votes for M, five each for PSU/MN.
Yes, there is dispute about the order but only AFTER #1 and there is only significant disagreement after #2. All voters agree that tOSU is #1 and most agree that M is #2 then the order for 3/4 is very much up in the air as PSU and MN are currently exactly tied.
Also, Sagrin for another unbiased view has:
- #2 nationally, tOSU, 95.00
- #5 nationally, M, 85.24
- #9 nationally, PSU, 84.82
- #10 nationally, MN, 81.16
Note that the gap between tOSU and M (9.76) is more than twice as large as the gap between M and MN (4.08). Thus, Sagrin's rankings also indicate that there is a LARGE gap between tOSU and the other three and only a very small difference amongst the other three.
Last week I had PSU at #1 because I *THOUGHT* that their road wins over Purdue and Auburn were more impressive than anything that tOSU, M, or MN had. As I noted upthread, PSU took some hits this weekend. On top of that, tOSU picked up a win better than anything that any of the others have and Minnesota picked up a VERY nice win as well.
Here are the 16 wins by those four teams ranked by current opponent Sagrin ranking:
Then I rearranged that by what I think is the "strength" of the win. I'm taking opponent quality, location of game, and MOV into account to come up with this and it is admittedly somewhat subjective:
Ohio State clearly stands out here because:
- They have the best win and two of the best three, and
- All four of their wins are in the top half of this group
The rest are harder to differentiate.
- Minnesota's win at MSU is great but their other three wins were against dreadfully bad opponents.
- Penn State has two decent wins but both have faded somewhat from what I initially thought they were and letting directional-Michigan hang around was a bad look.
- Michigan stands out in a negative way because the one time they faced an opponent with a pulse they struggled and their other three opponents were as bad as Minnesota's.
I'm still working on my ranking. Obviously I'll have tOSU at #1 just like Sagrin, the AP voters, the Coaches, every voter so far here, and everyone else who has an ability to view this in a reasonably neutral way. After that, performance says MN->PSU->M but that is the exact opposite of what I expect based on rosters so I'm trying to determine, at this point in the season, how much of this should be roster-based and how much should be performance-to-date based.
It is after 4th where I see a gap.
I think everyone agrees that there is a big gap after #4 because the other 10 teams each have at least one loss and most of those losses aren't even arguably "quality losses".
if these teams were playing each other on a neutral field this Saturday, and I had to bet $10 on the games ( and I wouldn’t bet any more tha that) I would flip a coin on OSU, UM and PSU. And begrudgingly pick those 3 over the gophers. And I could be totally wrong.
Like I said, I'm used to you being basically the last person on earth to move tOSU to #1 so I'm not surprised that you disagree with Sagrin, all the voters here,
@Mdot21 (see quoted below), the AP, etc on the Buckeyes but I was curious why you had Minnesota a step down because I see it more like this:
Kind of where I’m at but remove OSU. I think OSU a good deal above the other 3. I think M-PSU-Minny all kinda in the same group- and a good notch below OSU.
So Mdot, Sagrin, the AP, etc would all change your formulation to:
"If these teams were playing each other on a neutral field this Saturday, and I had to bet $10 on the games (and I wouldn't bet any more than that) I would flip a coin on UM, MN, and PSU. And I'd pick tOSU over any of those three."
Obviously I could be wrong. For one thing, Michigan and Minnesota are essentially being ranked based on one game each. Their three bad opponents were so bad that you can't get much of a read on them from those games so I'm basically ranking them based on this last weekend's results and maybe that was Minnesota's best game of the year or Michigan's worst or maybe MSU is a lot worse or UMD a lot better than I thought.
I feel like we have more information on tOSU and PSU but even there it is still pretty limited. Maybe Wisconsin sucks or just had a REALLY bad day. Maybe PSU's close game with CMU was just a fluke.
Based on what we have seen so far though, tOSU is a clear #1 with M, MN, and PSU very hard to differentiate between for 2/3/4.
