Ohio State's football program under John Cooper earned a mixed reputation as an incubator for professional talent without turning that talent into championships at the collegiate level. Put more directly, he couldn't beat Michigan.
Cooper's 2-10-1 record against Michigan often put the Ohio State guardians into the uncomfortable position of discussing a change at the top, which would have meant ousting a coach who generally had his teams in the Top Five. Finally, Cooper left the guardians little choice when the program collapsed from the weight of academic scandal and an embarrassing Outback Bowl loss to South Carolina less than two years ago.
Ohio State didn't fire Cooper exactly because he couldn't beat Michigan, but the imperative remains in college football: You have to beat your rival.
Now Jim Tressel is walking into those same deep waters, because the season is shaping up such that an Ohio State loss to Michigan in three weeks could stand between the Buckeyes and a trip to the national championship game to be played at the Fiesta Bowl. Another big shakeout last weekend removed Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, Georgia and North Carolina State from the ranks of the unbeaten. Ohio State now stands third in the polls andsecond in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings, still needing Miami or Oklahoma to slip.
Oklahoma's schedule already has been interesting and the Sooners have kept beating, in turn, three straight Top 15 opponents -- Texas, Iowa State and Colorado. It gets a little easier now for the Sooners, but they'll have to deal with Texas A&M and Oklahoma State. Miami's schedule will be a bit of a challenge, with games on deck against Tennessee, Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech.
Any Oklahoma or Miami loss puts Ohio State into the title game for certain, provided the Buckeyes handle Purdue, Illinois and, of course, Michigan. Tressel is off on the right foot, beating Michigan last year to drop the Wolverines out of a tie for the Big 10 title. Now Michigan stands to invade Columbus knowing it can ruin the Buckeyes as a national title contender -- which, as everyone remembers, it did in 1996 and 1998.
Ohio State is fortunate to be No. 2 in the BCS, finishing the climb all the way from No. 13 in the preseason Associated Press poll with a bizarre round of behavior by the voters. Now that the voters are certifiably unpredictable, the Buckeyes can't be sure they'll be in the championship game even if they finish a perfect regular season.
A week ago, Ohio State sat fifth in the BCS, with Oklahoma and Miami in the top two spots. At that point, the Buckeyes suffered not from their computer rankings, which were stronger than Miami's, or their schedule, which was ranked tougher than Miami's, but from the polls.
Traditionally, the polls enforce a pecking order of triumph and setback based on the results of games. But the poll starts before the games. Teams are ranked entirely by reputation and speculation at the start of the year, to be moved down only if they lose and to be moved up only if the teams ahead of them lose.
Ohio State started the year ranked 13th by AP and moved up to only sixth last week because eight teams still were unbeaten. Teams like Miami and Virginia Tech, which had proven no more than the Buckeyes on the field, were going to stay ahead of them in the polls so long as they didn't lose.
At least, that's how the polls have always worked. And, as tradition would predict, Virginia Tech fell below the Buckeyes this week after its loss to Pittsburgh. But Miami also fell a spot in the AP poll this week under circumstances that probably are unprecedented -- an unbeaten defending national champion is dropped to No. 2 from No. 1 after a 25-point win on the road. With that strange decision, Miami's BCS poll average fell by one-half of a point, allowing Ohio State to sneak past and take second place in the BCS rankings.
So Ohio State's position today is a gift from the voters, who have lost their minds. After years of complaining that computers can't understand football as well as people can, the voters apparently have been taken aback by discrepancies between people and computers in the first two rounds of BCS results.
All year, the voters put Miami at the top for the right reasons, strengthening their case with the Hurricanes' dramatic win against Florida State last month. But Miami's average computer rating came in at 4.33 last week, with no ranking putting it higher than second and five rankings putting it as low as fifth.
The voters couldn't help but notice that they were way out of line with the quantitative analysis. And commentators were saying Oklahoma is really better. So Miami found itself in an unusual position: Its unbeaten defense of a national championship suddenly isn't good enough to maintain the top ranking.
Rather than argue that the polls are valuable precisely because they factor in such values, which are missing from the computer, the voters cratered and looked for reasons to downgrade Miami. Last Saturday, the Hurricanes wafted up to Rutgers for a throw-away road game against a conference patsy. They didn't play with any great zeal for three quarters and Rutgers led midway into the second half. So Miami stopped fooling around, scored four touchdowns in the fourth quarter and won going away, 42-17.
Is that not a persuasive win? Did Miami not drop the hammer? Did Miami not demonstrate a fierce killer instinct, a certain cat-and-mouse dominance? Evidently not, because the voters didn't care to see that. They were looking for reasons to bring themselves in line with the computers and used Miami's sluggishness for three quarters as their justification.
Another interesting case coming down the line is Texas, which is showing, again, that the right reputation, combined with the right loss early in the season, can carry a vulnerable team toward the championship. Despite a loss to Oklahoma last month, Texas is right on Ohio State's heels in the polls. The difference is that Texas began the year ranked fourth by the AP, while Ohio State ranked 13th. That preseason ranking is as big as any Texas win this season.
The Longhorns moved up to third before losing to Oklahoma, then fell only to eighth. Now, with four previous unbeatens taking their turns at losing on Nov. 2, the Longhorns are back in the championship hunt, ranked fourth in the polls. And that's not unjust; after all, it took the top-ranked team on a neutral site to beat Texas. But the values that inform poll voters have played to advantage for Texas while hurting Ohio State.
From the beginning of BCS rankings, no one ever figured they'd be much influenced by voter flakiness. Up until this year, voters have argued hard on behalf of their own assessments. Last year, voters went berserk when the computers put Nebraska into the national championship game after a lopsided loss to Colorado. The voters turned out to be right, for Nebraska made no kind of challenge to Miami for the title.
Now voters are marking down an unbeaten defending national champion to bring themselves into line with the computers. They're allowing the computers to devalue the national championship by declining to value it with their votes.
No doubt, a national championship game between this year's two best teams is the desired outcome. But do we want the computers to decide that entirely? The computers do a lot of valuable numbers-crunching that voters can't do. But voters account for a lot of issues that computers can't. Voters were wrong last year to dismiss the computers, and they're equally wrong this year to give in to the computers. The voters ought to stick to their guns, lest they could stand responsible for keeping an unbeaten defending champion out of the championship game.
Right now, though, Ohio State can't be sure voters won't decree a national championship game including an unbeaten defending champion. Maybe voters will like what they see from the Hurricanes against Tennessee, Pittsburgh or Virginia Tech, then decide to give Miami back the top-ranking, in which case Ohio State could lose its grasp on the championship game without losing anywhere else.
It's all a big dart throw right now. The Buckeyes will play their games, the computers will run their calculations and the voters will cast their votes. Ohio State can't win the national title just by finishing 13-0 with the Big Ten championship -- or maybe it can. But it's not pulling the strings.
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