College Football Wins & Losses

Sent to Stewart Mandel at SI.com

Stewart –
I hope this isn’t too long for your mailbag, but I want to take a second to lay out my point with my question. In the discussion of comparing 1-loss teams, everyone seems to obsess over the team that inflicted the loss. Why don’t fans ever discuss the other side of the ledger – who did you beat?
You illustrated the point quite well earlier in your comparison of Alabama and Oklahoma State. By any objective measure, OKSt has played, and beaten, a more meaningful schedule, but their loss is to a crappy team. Alabama has played an easier schedule (this is where LSU’s non-conference schedule really shines) but lost to the best team in the country. Everyone talks about the losses; no one talks about the wins.
We saw this the last time the Tigers were in the national title discussion in ’07, when we were parsing through 2-loss teams. LSU had lost to Kentucky, OU had lost to Mizzou, etc, etc. No one pointed to LSU’s demolition of Virginia Tech by 40 points. No other contender that year had anywhere close to comparable win.
In ’06, when the voters bumped Florida ahead of Michigan, despite each only having 1 loss, they might’ve actually gotten right (even if for the wrong reasons). Michigan’s signature win that year was against then-#2 Notre Dame, but other than the Ohio State game, their schedule was a dud. Florida went on the road to beat #13, and beat #25 and #8 on neutral fields.
In ’08, when the Big 12 South had their three-headed tie going on, everyone talked about which loss was better/worse. No one talked about OU hanging 60 points on 3 consecutive ranked opponents (2 on the road), or that that played (and beat) 2 more ranked teams than either Texas Tech or Texas. 2001, Colorado smokes Nebraska and wins the Big 12 title, but beats no one else of consequence (lost to Texas and didn’t have Oklahoma on the schedule). Nebraska, meanwhile, beats #17 ND and #2 OU.
How did we get so fixated on losses? Isn’t the point to win games? Shouldn’t we be talking about who a team *beat* to get where they are? Why aren’t we comparing the scores in games they won, instead of lost?