I love threads like this, when other teams make fun of you for WINNING. As Jim Rome says, make all the points and excuses you want, but the final answer is... Scoreboard.
I don't care if we win the rest of our games by 1 point each and we look like a High School team... as long as we win.
But the polls care. And everyone cares about the polls
NU moved up in both polls after the win. I think winning all your games by 1 pt would get you ranked very, very high at years end. Remember that Ohio state national championship team? Close games almost every damn week.
That said I do think NU played a sloppy game and of course I'm never happy with that. But ultimately, we won. At the end of the year, NO ONE cares how close the game was. It just shows up as a W.
Take two teams. One of them No. 15, the other No. 16. Both of them playing very similar opponents, who aren't in the top 25, on the same day. The #16 team wins by 17 points. The #15 team wins, but only by 1 point. Where do they stand in the polls come Monday??
You can't tell me that voters don't in some way base their votes on style/margin of victory.
Of course they do, that's just one game. But if a team continually wins by 1 point over the season and remains undefeated, they WILL be ranked very high, and deservedly so. That was the point, that W in the end is what matters.
Take the NU-TX game as an example last year. NU fell in the polls after the loss, and Texas (i think) even climbed. It was obvious how close they came to losing, in the end, they didn't. They got the W.
I'm all for seeing positives in a loss. I thought my team played very well against AU and TX last year and those games gave me hope. But in terms of rankings, W is what ultimately matters.
