Chris
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It's not simply the timing of the loss. OSU only looked like a top 4 team in the country AFTER losing to MSU. In other words, OSU looked like a top 4 team in the country for two games, one of which was a bowl game.
Had OSU played up to the level of talent on the roster the entire season, undoubtedly they'd be in. Top to bottom, they might have come into the year with the most talent of any team in the country.
Had they dominated the rest of the season and still had the close loss to MSU, they might have had a chance to get in. However, when it takes you 11 weeks to finally play up to expectations, you're not going to get rewarded over teams with superior resumes.
They definitely looked like a top 4 team in the country before Michigan week, in more than one game, except it was against inferior competition. Then there were weeks where they looked pretty mediocre, again, against inferior competition. But the same could be said for almost anybody. Didn't this squad win like 38-0 against Hawaii and people said they looked like ass? Kind of lends credence to the whole "Nothing will ever be good enough" thing that Meyer was saying, and the notion that expectations were so high they were never going to reach them.