matters a lot, and it should.

Why does Georgia, Alabama, Ohio Stats, etc. get the benefit of the doubt? They are consistently putting together 12-0, 11-1, 10-2 seasons. Year after year, they’re at the top. So, when they drop a fluke game, they get the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because history has shown the Alabama is a really good team, even if they have a freak loss to Vanderbilt.

Those are obvious ones, so let’s look at teams like Ole Miss and Penn State. Why do they get the benefit of the doubt? Because they have momentum from previous seasons. Ole Miss went 11-2 last year and 8-5 the year before. Penn State went 10-3 and 11-2. So, even when they drop a game, we have 2.5 years of evidence that they are a good team. We know that a random loss is more of a fluke than anything else.

Then you have BYU. We went 5-7 last year. We returned most of our guys. We weren’t expected to do well because we didn’t do well last year. So when we roll off 9 straight wins, voters are more skeptical of us because we don’t have the consistent success. Because of this, bad losses (like Kansas) look less like flukes because we suffer bad losses all the time.

Here’s the cool thing: even though we were expected to be bad, we were still as high as #6. We could have had (and still could have) a first round bye. Because we have an equal shot, we had what we deserved. Then we lost to a bad team, and we got dinged for it because it’s consistent with our past few seasons.

If we want what these SEC/B1G teams have, where we get the benefit of the doubt, we have to consistently win. Thats why Utah was ranked so high at the beginning of this year: they’ve put together successful seasons year after year. They’ve built this momentum.

Why is Boise State so much higher than Army? Boise State has the momentum, Army does not. That stuff matters, and it absolutely should.

You win, you get a seat at the table. But when you lose, teams who put together good seasons year after year get the benefit of the doubt when one hit wonders do not. It’s that simple.