Fundamentally, this is a fairness issue.
When a typical G5 team beats a mediocre P5 team like Indiana by 2 TD's in a hard fought game with multiple lead changes that could have gone either way, we pat that G5 team on the head and say "nice job".
When a typical NC Contender beats a mediocre P5 team like Indiana by 2 TD's in a hard fought game with multiple lead changes that could have gone either way, we drop that P5 team multiple spots in the rankings and say "WTF is wrong with (insert NC Contender here)".
Cincinnati can't have it both ways:
- If they are a typical G5 team then their hard fought win over IU is a real accomplishment and they deserve a head pat and a hearty "nice job".
- If they are a NC contender then their hard fought win over IU is an embarrassment and they should have been docked for it.
Now it is true that SOME legitimate (ie, non-Cincy) NC Contenders will have and have had losses and unimpressive wins similar to Cincy's win over IU but there is a difference. When we look at the Buckeyes and say "hey, they 'only' beat Minnesota by 14 and they lost to Oregon" the answer to that criticism is that Ohio State's schedule is tough enough that they will have an opportunity to show us that the less impressive performances were outliers.
Cincinnati simply doesn't have that chance because they didn't schedule the quality OOC that they need to make up for their crappy league. Indiana is the 4th toughest team that they will face before the bowls. For comparison Indiana is the 8th toughest team that tOSU will face before the bowls. Cincinnati needed to shine in that game to show that they belonged with the big boys and they didn't. Instead they looked like they don't belong at all.
Here is a comparison of the score differential in Indiana's game against tOSU, Iowa, PSU, and Cincy:
The
bolded positions are when Indiana was within two scores. Someone upthread argued that Penix was full strength against Cincy. Ok, then ignore the tOSU results but Penix was full strength in game #1 against Iowa and he was for at least most of the game against PSU IIRC.
To be fair, MSU also had a very unimpressive performance against Indiana. Personally, I have them ranked lower than most everybody else here in part for that reason. The difference between MSU and Cincy is that MSU has multiple opportunities to prove me wrong, Cincy doesn't. If MSU really is a NC Contender then they'll beat Michigan this weekend, they'll beat Ohio State on 11/20, and they'll beat PSU on 11/27. Cincinnati doesn't have any opponents left that even compare to M, tOSU, and PSU.