No matter what the click-thirsty, clout-chasing crowd says on social media, the College Football Playoff committee clearly recognizes greatness when it sees it. That is why, for the second week in a row,
the Ohio State Buckeyes have been installed at the top of the CFP rankings. The committee unveiled the Week 2 rankings on ESPN on Tuesday night, despite the fact that millions of Americans couldn’t watch them due to the protracted carriage disagreement between Disney and YouTube TV.
The Buckeyes (9-0) remained No. 1 while the Indiana Hoosiers (10-0) held onto the No. 2 spot in the rankings, despite coming tantalizingly close to falling to a Penn State team that the Buckeyes beat 38-14 just days before. Texas A&M stayed in third place after being Missouri, with No. 4 Alabama (8-1) and No. 5 Georgia (8-1) rounding out the top five, meaning that the first five slots in the rankings remained unchanged from Week 1.
The other Big Ten teams in the rankings included Oregon (8-1) at No. 8, USC (7-2) at No. 17, Michigan (7-2) at No. 18, and Iowa (6-3) at No. 21. Additionally, the Buckeyes’ season-opening victim… I mean, opponent, the Texas Longhorns (7-2) came in at No. 10, so I guess that means that has to be considered a quality win, again, right?
Currently, FanDuel has the Buckeyes as the odds-on favorite to win the national title at +195. IU is their closest competitor at +550, with Texas A&M at +700, followed by Alabama (+850), and Georgia (+1100). That margin has grown for the Buckeyes, who were ahead of the Hoosiers +220 to + 460 last week, so in a week’s time, OSU’s odds to win vs. the No. 2 team have increased by +115… I’m starting to think that Vegas is starting to realize something that I have been talking about for a while: Ohio State is dominating its opponents without even giving 100% effort.
I know that I am more than a bit biased and that I see everything through scarlet and gray-colored glasses, but I am starting to think that there is an even wider gap between Ohio State and the rest of college football than I already that there was.
There are people who try to tell you that the Buckeyes don’t deserve to be No. 1 because they “haven’t played anybody,” ignoring the fact that they have the No. 3 strength of record in the country, the No. 2 SRS, No. 1 Adj. EPA, No. 1 success rate, No. 1 game control rank, No. 1 average win probability, and top marks across all kinds of other advanced analytics, both opponent and adjusted and not.
The problem for OSU is that they so thoroughly humble their opponents that it makes them look worse than they actually are. Remember that season opener against Texas? While it was just a 14-7 game, it was a dominating performance from a Buckeye team that was nowhere near what it is now. Since then, though, detractors have used to say that Ohio State isn’t all that good, because the team’s best win was over an underwhelming Texas team.
Well, guess what, the Longhorns are now back in the top 10, and unlike in the SEC, where every loss is deemed a quality loss simply by virtue of the fact that it was against a team from the conference that was conferred protected status by the TV execs on high, Ohio State doesn’t have the opportunity to stack up “quality wins” simply by regularly beating mediocre teams propped up by fraudulent rankings.
Ryan Day has recently talked about stepping on the gas when the time is right. So if this is the Buckeyes in cruise control (which it absolutely is, as I wrote about after the win over Purdue), can you imagine how quickly they will run away from the field when they finally put this Death Star into gear? I can, because we saw it in the playoffs last year.
So, buckle up, college football world, because come Nov. 29, it will be all systems go for Ohio State as the Buckeyes leave the rest of the sport in its dust… again.
