This idea that a P5 team is better than a G5 team no matter what the results on the field say needs to stop, please.
I call BS on this.
I have listed RESULTS ON THE FIELD that STRONGLY indicate that Cincinnati is NOWHERE near the top P5 teams repeatedly and you have steadfastly refused to engage in that conversation. Stop pretending that 12-0 = 12-0. It doesn't. My local High School was 12-0 at one point this season. That doesn't mean they were as good as Georgia or for that matter Cincinnati. They weren't.
This Cincinnati team would be LUCKY to be mid-pack in the B1G. They beat Indiana by 14 in a back-and-forth game in which they trailed in the fourth quarter and did not permanently acquire a two-score lead until less than three minutes remained. Ie, it could have gone either way. That same Indiana team lost 34-6 to Iowa in a game that wasn't even that close. They also lost 24-0 to Penn State, 54-7 to Ohio State, 29-7 to Michigan, 38-3 to Rutgers, and 35-14 to Minnesota. Yeah, I know Penix got hurt but note that the Iowa game was before that as was the PSU game in which IU got shut out.
Cincinnati has a second common opponent with Ohio State in the form of Tulsa. Ohio State's performance against Tulsa was embarrassingly bad and yet the Buckeyes still beat them by 21 points. When Cincinnati played Tulsa they needed a goal-line stand as time was running out to avoid potentially going to OT.
Cincinnati also struggled with absolutely terrible Navy and Tulane teams and now their blowout over SMU is hilariously being heralded as proof of their greatness. Beating the crap out of SMU would be something of an accomplishment if not for the fact that Cincinnati is being treated like a legitimate NC contender. No other NC contender would get credit for beating the crap out of SMU, it would just be expected. Cincinnati gets credit for it because their schedule is so ridiculously bad that SMU is actually one of their toughest games. That tells you everything you need to know.
This was before last weekend's games but upthread I posted this table of tOSU's, Bama's, and Cincy's opponents by CBS' 1-130 rankings:
SMU is the second toughest opponent on Cincy's rinky-dink schedule. They would be sixth on tOSU's schedule or fifth on Bama's schedule.
