The BCS system weights losses much greater than wins, hence why we see this craziness. At one point the system was indifferent to whether a team lost early or late and everyone hated that because it took the momentum of the season out of play. Instead what we have now is a system where you don't want to be the last team to lose.
Get to #1 and then cancel the rest of your games !
One way to turn all of that around would be to rank teams only on their wins, such that you can only gain in the standings by winning, but wouldn't lose your position by losing.
So if OSU is at #1 and loses to Illinois, they probably wouldn't lose their #1 position just because the #2 team was able to stomp a lousy team; but they might lose it if the #2 team beats a worthy opponent in a conference championship.
Of course OSU might never make it to #1 if they never beat anyone of note.
Get to #1 and then cancel the rest of your games !
One way to turn all of that around would be to rank teams only on their wins, such that you can only gain in the standings by winning, but wouldn't lose your position by losing.
So if OSU is at #1 and loses to Illinois, they probably wouldn't lose their #1 position just because the #2 team was able to stomp a lousy team; but they might lose it if the #2 team beats a worthy opponent in a conference championship.
Of course OSU might never make it to #1 if they never beat anyone of note.