When looking at some of your posts on this topic in the Bowl SOC thread and then your responses you seem to be contradicting yourself from one thread to the other. Here you say you aren’t claiming to measure the disappointment level of every team that doesn’t win the national championship. But in the SOC thread you say this in response to Marq Husker’s findings:
“You’re not willing to acknowledge the emotional difference in going 11-1 and losing in September and going 11-1 with your only loss being in the 12th game. I can’t help you.”
That response leads to believe you are very much trying to measure the disappointment levels of teams. You also challenge utee to do his own research but when MarqHusker did just that you immediately dismissed it because the parameters for disappointment weren’t exactly like what you came up with.
Losing your last game that cost you a chance at a national title is extremely disappointing. No one argues that. But so is needing one result in the last week and not getting it (2008 Texas). So is winning your last game and having the voters decide to put someone else in (2014 TCU, 2018 Ohio St).
You seem to have narrowly defined what ultimate disappointment is in your view and any evidence to the contrary you are putting your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes, and shaking your head.
OAM set his criteria narrowly, that is true. He did so because he believes there is a qualitative emotional difference between a "final loss" and a "September loss".
It honestly makes sense. Ohio State, for example, had time to emotionally process the loss to Purdue. They knew it might be considered a damning loss by the committee, and continued their season. They ended up accomplishing some of their goals--beating Michigan, winning the CCG, and although they missed out on the CFP, they ended up in the Rose Bowl. And then, to top it off, they had an additional emotional goal--to send Meyer out on a high note.
Michigan, on the other hand, did not have a damning loss. They had a tough-fought close road loss to Notre Dame, a team that ended up undefeated and was a shoo-in for the CFP. All they had to do to get to the CFP was knock off Ohio State, and then they'd have as close to a lay-up in a CCG as you can get with Northwestern, and they'd have been in. But they lost. So instead of going to the CCG, instead of their consolation prize being the ROSE Bowl on NYD, they ended up losing and facing Florida in a rematch of the Citrus Bowl that nobody cared about. So much so that quite a few players even sat out.
Now, does that mean that OAM's criteria is a complete theory of quantifying "disappointed teams"? Probably not. But that doesn't invalidate that his criteria itself is meaningful.
