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

The other interesting question is, what should matter?

I think the SEC's conference tiebreakers are pretty good, and I wonder if we could adapt them to the national scene.

LINK

You would have criteria like these...

1. Win-Loss record.
2. Head-to-head.
3. Conference titles. (the SEC's second tiebreaker is "division record," in this case we're looking at conferences instead of divisions, but it's the same principle)

It doesn't really work after this, since you start getting into unhelpful minutia about conference/division wins which don't help on a national scale. This is probably where you would start developing criteria about opponents' win-loss record and margin of victory.

I think I would do this:

1. Win-Loss record.
2. Head-to-head.
3. Conference champions get priority.
4. Higher opp win% gets priority.
5. Higher MOV gets priority.

I'm not sure what you'd do after that, but how likely are you to have a tie after those five?