Haven't read through the last few days but here are my thoughts on the drop.
I've been on this board for about 7 years, and every single year I hear (and voice my own) complaints about pre-season polls, how they are unfair, how they set up an innate benefit of the doubt for certain teams and should be done away with.
Then we finally get a system where the rankings committee looks at each week as a brand new fresh slate, independent of previous rankings, and everyone gets pissed and loses it. It's slightly understandable, because I don't think we have trained ourselves to think of the rankings on their own terms yet (I've seen a few comments in the thread about "rising and falling", which implies progress from a previous position, and also about "starting off in a better spot next year", as if that early ranking means anything anymore. Personally I think this playoff committee is a breath of seriously fresh air.
Sure, it "hurts" Nebraska for one week (even though it doesn't, really), but it's the right way to do things. If we win this weekend, we will likely jump some of those 7 loss teams, because at that point we will have given more evidence that we are actually a good football team and not just the recipients of a schedule playing deaf and blind schools. Would we beat some of the teams ranked in front of us? Probably. But right now, in week 10, that's not what matters.
What matters is that every single one of those teams has put some kind of tangible visible evidence on the field of being a good football team by beating someone legitimate and we haven't. YET. We will get our shot and our spot in the rankings will reflect what we do with that shot.
Ohio State has beat Michigan State.
Auburn has beat Kansas State, LSU, and Ole Miss.
Ole Miss has beat Alabama.
UCLA has beat Arizona State and Arizona.
Michigan State has beat us.
Kansas State has beat Oklahoma.
Arizona has beat Oregon.
Georgia has beat Clemson.
We have beat Miami, who is not ranked, but after this weekend will be if they beat Florida State, and if we win that will be another ranked win, and our spot in the polls will take care of itself.
This is literally what we have been asking for for years you guys.
Landlord, the "problem" is that the critical thinking stops with the results you mentioned. As much as we hoped it would be different (and I'll admit the committee is probably better than the AP/coaches), the same fallacy exists: The committee is basing their rankings on pre-conceived ideas about team/conference strength (based on past years' performances and possibly recruiting rankings.
I also am getting the impression that quality wins matter disproportionally more than bad losses.
Using the results you posted:
Ohio State has beat Michigan State. (MSU has no major out of conference win)
Auburn has beat Kansas State, LSU, and Ole Miss. (These teams that Auburn beat have 2 decent out of conference wins between the 3..LSU over Wisconsin and Ole Miss over Boise St.)
Ole Miss has beat Alabama. (Alabama has no major out of conference win)
UCLA has beat Arizona State and Arizona. (ASU has a quality win over ND out of conference, Arizona doesnt.)
Michigan State has beat us. (Agree that they should be ranked ahead of us due to beating us and their losses are considered quality based on the number in front of those teams' names.)
Kansas State has beat Oklahoma. (OU has no major out of conference win)
Arizona has beat Oregon. (Oregon has quality win against MSU)
Georgia has beat Clemson. (Clemson has no quality win)
So in essence, other than the Big12 beating each other, there only "quality" win out of conference is against Minnesota. Are you able to explain to me what criteria is being used to determine why the Big12 strength is believed to be so much better than say the B1G and ACC?
Also, are we really going to consider the SEC West as a juggernaut off of wins over Kansas St (see Big12 argument), Boise St (quality win due BSU record and them beating 1-loss CSU), and Wisconsin (this could go either way in terms of how quality of win this is) ? That's not enough for me to consider Miss St and Alabama as better than most everyone else. And this doesn't even take into consideration any losses.
Georgia's the only SEC East team with what could be considered a quality win (Clemson), however, there 2 losses were "bad". Compare that to NU, who has a close in quality win as Clemson (Miami), but doesn't have "bad" losses on their resume. Not sure how Georgia is considered better than NU based on schedule results.
The ACC's major out of conference win? All I can think of is FSU over Notre Dame.
I'll gvie the Pac12 their due because of the collective quality of some their out of conference wins.
In a nutshell, this is why people like me aren't necessarily satisfied with the committee's output so far. It looks to be similarly based on the same types of things that we didn't like about the previous way of polling. Perhpas the end result will be considered good, but I do feel like that's generally the way many felt about the final, pre-bowl, BCS poll results.