While polls carry no weight whatsoever with the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, they certainly generate plenty of debate. As soon as they’re released every week, college football fans flood their respective message boards to discuss which teams are ranked too high and which teams are ranked too low.
No team generates more comments — both positive and negative — than the Ohio State Buckeyes. Some fans feel the defending national champions should be the No. 1 team in the country, while others think the Bucks should be ranked much lower.
That begs the question: where should Ohio State be ranked right now?
Our panel — which includes associate editors Bart Doan and Terry Johnson, senior writer Kevin Causey, and The Buckeye Battle Cry’s Joe Dexter — will provide their thoughts on this controversial topic in this week’s roundtable.
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Question: Where does Ohio State belong in the polls?
Joe Dexter
On Twitter @BuckeyesRadio
Nobody who focuses on these types of things will ever be content with putting Ohio State as the number one team. In the College Football Playoff era, everything is subjective. If the Buckeyes don’t show perfection on the field every single week, a majority of pundits will believe someone else should be number one.
This is what I hate about the state of college football right now. The game of football was never intended to be the flashy sport that was judged on how many points you can score, how badly you can beat your opponent, or not making any mistakes.
But that’s the reality the Buckeyes live in, despite showing such profound resolve during the nation’s longest winning streak. This is a group of players that has not lost a regular season conference game since Urban Meyer took over the program. There is no doubt that there aren’t many teams with the level of talent this Buckeye squad has. You would be hard pressed to name more than two teams in the country that match them talent-wise on a position-by-position basis.
Yet we still question if Ohio State is the best team in the country?
This game is about resolve. It’s about being able to survive despite making the inevitable mistakes.
The Utah Utes needed resolve to survive Cal last week. If TCU can escape the season unscathed, its CFP resume will have Survival Skills printed in bold. Baylor will eventually face a team (like WVU this week, which beat the Bears last year) that can test it offensively and put up some type of effort up defensively.
Yet Ohio State is not getting credit for being able to survive the ever-so-popular close call games of 2015.
The Buckeyes are the number one team in the country, until somebody else proves otherwise.
Bart Doan
On Twitter @TheCoachBart
I always have and will continue to error on the Danny Kanell side of things well before anyone knew what Danny Kanell thought. I sort of think that, since college football is a sport where its championships are played for in large part based on opinion, that the defending champ is the number one team until further notice.
It’s also important to remember that this time last year, no one really thought much of Ohio State other than as the team that was out of it because “they lost to Virginia Tech” and “Big Ten, yo.” There’s really not much solid logic in attaching absolutes to teams as contenders at this point because we really still don’t know a whole lot.
Also, you have to measure Ohio State against what it’s doing, not what everyone “thinks” the Buckeyes “should” be doing. Everyone seems to want OSU to win by 50 every game to validate itself. Think about how stupid that is, and how much of an underhanded compliment it is to say that the Buckeyes are winning but not impressively enough.
OSU is the only team with this stigma: that it needs to not only win, but do it in a certain way to maintain its lofty status. Do we complain when TCU gives up a million points to Texas Tech? Or how about when Alabama gets railroaded at home by Ole Miss? OSU has such lofty expectations that the Buckeyes seem to have to do more to validate who they are than anyone else. So deep down, we all know they’re number one, which is where they should be.
Kevin Causey
On Twitter @CFBZ
I think they are ranked right where they deserve to be ranked. This has been a crazy year and the fact that they are undefeated and have won 19 straight games has to be considered.
You simply aren’t going to win by blowout every single game. Utah beat Utah State by only 10 points. Does that mean Utah is horrible? Of course not. TCU beat Texas Tech by only three. Should the Horned Frogs be stoned? No. Baylor has only played teams like Western Nebraska school of horticulture and techonology (yes, the Bears did also play Texas Tech). Should the Bears be laughed at? Yeah, kind of.
The point being, there isn’t a team right now with a body of work that screams, “We are the definitive number one team!” Until a team makes such a statement, the number one team in the land is Ohio State.
Terry Johnson
On Twitter @SectionTPJ
The answer to this question depends on what the poll is actually supposed to measure.
If we’re supposed to rank teams according to what each has accomplished on the gridiron so far, Ohio State is not the top team in the nation. Although the Buckeyes would deserve a spot in the top four, Utah (wins over Michigan and Oregon) and Florida (win over Ole Miss) have better wins that the Buckeyes do at this point in the season. Since this approach is predicated on rewarding teams that defeat strong competition, it only makes sense for the Utes and Gators to get the nod over OSU for the top spot.
However, if the poll is supposed to measure which team is the best team, then Ohio State has to be number one. While we can criticize them for not winning with style points, it’s impossible to argue against the Buckeyes’ resolve when faced with a win-or-go-home situation. The Buckeyes were automatic when faced with those challenges last year, thumping three straight top-10 opponents en route to the national championship.
With 15 starters returning from that squad, I have absolutely no reason to think that it won’t happen again this fall.
