COMMENTARY | Urban Meyer has opened up a can of worms with this one.
On November 11, the outspoken head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes said that he has had OSU at No. 2 in the USA Today coaches’ poll all season long . Such an admission is bound to see Meyer be scrutinized for putting his own team in a higher position than where it actually has ended up every single week so far in 2013.
Fans of the Florida State Seminoles — who are the current No. 2 team — and the Oregon Ducks, who held the spot for nine weeks before falling to Stanford on November 7, will probably think Meyer’s voting habits reek of a bias towards the team that he coaches.
The problem with that theory is, Meyer is absolutely justified in having the Buckeyes at No. 2.
If you remember, OSU did begin the 2013 season at second in the coaches’ poll — a fair ranking for a team that went 12-0 in 2012, but couldn’t be realistically ranked ahead of two-time defending national champion Alabama. Unfortunately, the Buckeyes’ run at No. 2 lasted a mere two weeks, because the other coaches decided that Oregon’s 59-10 rout of Virginia on September 7 was more impressive than the Buckeyes’ 42-7 win over San Diego State that same weekend.
While on paper, a road win over an ACC team looks more impressive than a home victory over a Mountain West foe, the pollsters couldn’t have been more wrong on this one. Currently, Virginia is in the throes of a seven-game losing streak, winless in the ACC, and 2-8 overall on the year — that’s about as lousy as it gets for a team in a BCS conference. SDSU, on the other hand, is a respectable 5-4 and appears poised to earn a trip to a bowl game come December. Mercifully, OSU doesn’t have to worry about Oregon anymore, but the voters have found a new team for the Buckeyes to be unrightfully stuck behind — Florida State.
Continue Reading: Urban Meyer Is Right, the Ohio State Buckeyes Should Be No. 2 in the Polls (Yahoo Contributor Network)
