What to do With a Loss

Before the Logic Poll is released, I have a bone to pick:

At the beginning of any college football season, there will be only a handful of teams who have a legitimate chance to go undefeated and guarentee a punched ticket to that National Championship game that everyone seems so hellbent on winning. Last year, among others, proved that you can indeed reach that game with a loss (or two!) but to guarantee your trip you must follow one simple rule: Win. Every Saturday.

The season began with the mighty, but oh holy hell how they've fallen. Georgia, USC, Ohio State, Florida have been erased from the top 2 - all having violated the first rule of a guaranteed Title Game appearance. Gone. Eradicated. The dream of the guaranteed trip is now out of reach, but the trip itself is still very tangible. Each team with one loss has the chance to regain that magical 2 spot, or, given the craziness we've seen recently, slip up to the 1 ranking and play a fellow rule-violater. How they accomplish that feat, however, is no longer up to them. The ranking Gods of the BCS are now at work, and their fates rest solely with algorythms and mechanics that I'm convinced nobody really understands, including the AP and Coaches - both of whom figure largely into the equation (I know that those polls are no longer included, but the various mechanics that make up the BCS still base a good portion of their reckoning on the traditional polls). Rankings, which until now - until the losses - were largely academic, now figure prominently in the actual destiny of those teams who have...well...lost.

The AP now ranks the one loss teams who were firmly within the handful of teams who could run the table as such, loss in parenthesis:

9) USC (unranked Oregon State)
11) Georgia (now #2 Alabama)
12) Florida (unranked Ole Miss)
13) Auburn (now #3 LSU)
14) Ohio State (now #9 USC)

My question is simple: Why is USC not being punished more for losing in terrific fashion to unranked Oregon State? I mean - even in the catagory of "unranked" Oregon State is probably the worst team up there on the board. Why is it that Ohio State - who lost on the road to the number 9 team in the country - is still ranked lower than Florida who lost to unranked Ole Miss at home?

Every year, there is an "insert alliterated cliche" weekend where a ton of previously top 7-ish teams get beat. That was last Saturday. Now the rankings, which until this point were largely academic, start to matter because frankly, the fact that Auburn is ahead of Ohio State could cost Ohio State a chance at the Title game in the future. Based on the "quality" of loss, the most recent poll should look more like this:

11) Georgia (now #2 Alabama)
13) Auburn (now #3 LSU)
14) Ohio State (now #9 USC)
12) Florida (unranked Ole Miss)
9) USC (unranked Oregon State)

USC should drop to the bottom, Florida should be more severely punished, Ohio State and Georgia should be moved up. I don't normally cry out about SEC bias, or that the "media hates Ohio State" but in this case, I think both Buckeyes and Bulldogs have reason to be pretty shitty at the most recent polls.

The fly in the ointment is the fact that USC beat Ohio State head to head. However, week to week results have never really mattered much, see Ole Miss' and Oregon State's absense from the rankings. Just because one team beats another on a given Saturday has never played much into final rankings - USC lost to a marginal at best football team in Oregon State. The media and coaches aren't punishing them for it, so they must still think that USC is a damn good football team. Why then, if bias against the BXI and Ohio State has nothing to do with it, are they punishing Ohio State so severly for losing on the road against a damn good football team?

I'm calling shenanagans on this whole thing...