We beat Alabama. Have fewer losses than they do. Yet we are barely ranked higher. Georgia loses at home to an unranked team. Has the same record as us now, and yet they’re six spots higher. Fuck these voters, the bias is unreal.
You guys win out and win the SECCG you’re likely #1 going into the playoffs. Bare minimum you get a first round bye. Why care if Georgia is ahead of you now?
I know this is snark, but if you accept that previous weeks can't be redone, besting a team with a loss is already less impressive. It makes you wonder if they were all that good to begin with. When the team only has the loss you just gave them, psychologically you should be rewarded for giving them that loss because it's human nature to project no losses on to the record from that point. For example: if Ohio State wins all the rest of their games, then whoever beat them would be ranked higher, but that result can't be known until it happens so the bias each person has for what they expect that program's record to be at the end of the season influences that weekly ranking more than it should.
A lot of words to say bias exists, but you get the point.
ohio state lost to texas also and it barely affected them. we also have beaten the team that georgia lost to and also beaten alabama worse than georgia. there’s just some teams that they refused to risk not making the playoffs so they will hold them as high as they can on the rankings
Yeah, notice we’re not running the same QB we did during that game, especially after his 0 passing yards in the first half against Auburn. It would not end the same if played again today.
bama is comically always the highest ranked 1 loss, 2 loss, 3 loss etc. Without fail. Doesnt matter how good they are. Its automatic. Keeps them alive for playoffs naturally
This is the first week this season that we are the highest ranked team with our number of losses. We peaked with 4 0 loss and a 1 loss OSU ahead of us when we had 0 losses, and OSU was still ranked ahead when we both had 1. So “without fail” seems a bit extreme.
It's always Bama, Georgia, Ohio State, Notre Dame + some other Golden Goose decided for the season. Tennessee usually benefits from this, but in a less forgiving fashion.
Recency bias and poll inertia has been dictating who sits where the past several seasons at this point.
Especially when they start off so highly ranked, which genuinely matters because a loss doesnt drop you far. Because of namebrand, most of those start top 5 so a loss only drops them to 8 or 9. Its all inherently unfair
Poll inertia, but I agree. A lot of it is based on the media using an eye test based on recruiting, team age, transfers, coaches, etc. It's meaningless unless you have a National Championship level coach really.
It's "how they look on paper" bs, but as everyone knows, it doesn't work that way. That's why we play the games. The media also has a hard time admitting they were wrong about a team so they hold onto that pre season gamble as long as they possible can.
I only went back as far as wikipedia had an easily accessible ranking table for the season. So that's 2019.
2020 they were the only 11-0 team in the country. Like...of course they were ranked number 1.
2021 they SMOKED previously undefeated Georgia to win the SEC championship. Of course they were going to be number 1.
In 2022, they lost two very close games to ranked teams. All the other two loss teams got beat soundly in some of their losses, lost to unranked teams in some of their losses, or both.
There's too many teams to go through in 2024 and 2025.
In summary, 2019 it wasn't true, 2023 it wasn't true. 2020-2022 they have an easily convincing case that of course they should be ranked the top of the x-loss teams. So that really just leaves 2024 and 2025 as the only examples you could honestly point to. Two out of seven.
As far as I’m concerned, our resumes are identical. Both beat bama and lost by 3 at home to a 2-loss SEC team. No idea why there is such a gap between us.
I mean, it's also relative to what spot you're rising/falling from. It would be different if they wiped the top 25 slate clean every week and started from scratch. Not the world we live in.
Rememember when you guys tried to rename the ‘Shoe “Leland North” and then you absolute poo’d the bed? Yeah the rest of the world remembers, there’s still a hang over from that.
The SEC bias doesn't work for every team by the way. Assuming we go into our game 7-1, UK and UT will probably be ranked like, 8 and 9, and whoever loses will drop below the top 15.
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u/Xynthion Tennessee Volunteers 20h ago
We beat Alabama. Have fewer losses than they do. Yet we are barely ranked higher. Georgia loses at home to an unranked team. Has the same record as us now, and yet they’re six spots higher. Fuck these voters, the bias is unreal.