As the big boys continue to fall, BCS busters take over top five

I knew this was coming.

As soon as Stephen Garcia threw into double coverage in the waning seconds of South Carolina's loss at Kentucky on Saturday, I knew I'd get mail from the folks who disagreed with my rant in last week's Power Rankings against the people who ranked Alabama ahead of South Carolina in spite of the Tide's head-to-head loss to the Gamecocks.

"Will you still rank South Carolina ahead of Alabama now?" they asked. "After all, South Carolina did win on the field."

No, I won't. South Carolina is ranked below Alabama this week, because their résumés are no longer equal. Head-to-head is an ironclad tiebreaker for teams with similar résumés. After that, it's a judgment call. (See Texas and Nebraska this week.)

What I didn't see coming was the negative response to what I wrote last week. It's only common sense that the team that wins on the field should get a higher ranking given equal résumés, but apparently there are a number of folks out there who believe I should award the higher rank to the team that is supposed to be better -- not the team that actually won. These people seem, mostly, to be stat heads who obsess over probability and point spreads. For them, there is no reason to actually play the games.

Those other factors are necessary when formulating preseason rankings and when ranking teams that haven't played one another, but by this point in the season, we need to be ranking teams based mostly on what we've seen -- not on what is supposed to happen. Alabama may very well be better than South Carolina, but we needed to see Alabama bounce back with a win and South Carolina lose to Kentucky before making that assessment.

Of course, I also got plenty of positive response from folks who ripped the 19 Associated Press poll voters who ranked Alabama ahead of South Carolina last week. Maybe some of those voters got the message. This week's Disgrace to the University - or Disgrace to the Poll - clubhouse is far less crowded.

Only 10 voters ranked Ohio State ahead of Wisconsin in spite of Wisconsin's win. That group includes Mark Anderson of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who ranked Wisconsin an astounding 10 spots below Ohio State even though Wisconsin won by 13 points and exposed numerous Buckeyes flaws. Oh well. It's tough to find a clock in Vegas. Maybe Mark didn't know when the game started and missed it.

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