re: Why do people say OSU has shot over Bama?

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OSU has better wins

In the past the committee has favored better wins over better losses.

However, the committee likes to pick their four teams and then form the criteria around the four teams they picked so who knows.

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The more effective indicator is number of losses. Look at the final rankings each year. The teams are almost always grouped by losses; with at most one outlier per year (which hasn't ever affected whether a team makes the top 4 or not), the teams are very neatly ranked by losses.

I think Alabama is in over Ohio State regardless of whether or not Ohio State wins the Big Ten, and that the Big Ten title game is a win-and-in for Wisconsin and nothing more.

Right now I expect to see:
- The ACC Champion
- The SEC Champion
- Oklahoma and Wisconsin if both win
- Alabama if either Oklahoma or Wisconsin lose

The interesting part is if Oklahoma and Wisconsin lose. Do you take:

- Big Ten Champion Ohio State, at 11-2, who has four (!) wins over Power 5 teams that are 8-4 or better, but who has a terrible loss against Iowa and lost head-to-head against...
- Oklahoma, at 11-2, who has Ohio State and TCU as good wins but isn't a conference champion and just lost to...
- TCU, at 11-2, Big XII champion and a W over Oklahoma but not much else to their name;
- Wisconsin, at 11-1, with no real win to their name and no conference title
- Miami (FL) at 10-2, or Clemson at 11-2; both have a solid OOC win (Notre Dame and Auburn respectively), but lost their title game
- Georgia if they lose the SECCG, at 11-2, with a good win over Notre Dame but lost their title game

Based on the committee's track record, I think Wisconsin might still be in, even with a loss to another contender in OSU, simply because Wisconsin would still have 1 loss and you'd be putting all of the 1-loss teams in. But OSU does have a lot of good wins and would be adding Wisconsin to the skins in this scenario.

This scenario puts the committee in a tough spot, since they seem to like to go by win-loss, but they have a ton of head-to-head games that would be reasonable to use as tiebreakers.