Ohio State vs. Michigan State: How Spartans' Loss Reshapes Playoff Picture

How do you gain instant legitimacy? You beat the eighth-ranked team in the country on the road by 12 points.

The No. 14 Ohio State Buckeyes put themselves in pole position to win the Big Ten after a 49-37 win over the No. 8 Michigan State Spartans in East Lansing. As a result, the Bucks may be back in the playoff picture after all.

Winning the conference championship is essentially a prerequisite to make the top four, and with the Spartans out of the way, Ohio State has a relatively easy road between here and the end of the year.

ESPN.com's Brian Bennett remains skeptical that the Buckeyes will do enough:

Ohio State head coach remains confident that his team's done enough so far, per Patrick Maks of Eleven Warriors:

One thing is for sure; OSU won't crack the top four when the selection committee unveils its newest rankings. That would mean jumping 10 spots after one victory.

More than likely, the top four will look something like this:

Seed	Team	Record
1	Mississippi State Bulldogs	9-0 (5-0 SEC)
2	Florida State Seminoles	9-0 (6-0 ACC)
3	Oregon Ducks	8-1 (5-1 Pac-12)
4	Alabama Crimson Tide	8-1 (5-1 SEC)

Ohio State vs. Michigan State was billed as a playoff eliminator; whomever lost kissed its national title hopes goodbye.

"I personally feel like the playoff system starts this weekend," said Michigan State middle linebacker Taiwan Jones before the game, per MLive.com's Mike Griffith. "It's a one-game elimination."

Well, he and his Spartan teammates were eliminated on Saturday.

It's way too late in the season for Michigan State to have any chance impressing the selection committee all over again and getting into the top four.

Of course, that's not to say that Ohio State is a lock for the playoff, either. The Buckeyes will likely still be on the outside looking in when the Week 12 rankings are unveiled.

Entering Saturday, the Big Ten wasn't getting a ton of love from the committee. Here's a look at how many teams each conference had in the Top 25 and the conference's average ranking.

Conference	No. of Teams	Average Ranking
SEC	6	9.3
Big 12	5	12.6
Pac-12	5	13.4
Big Ten	4	15.0
ACC	4	17.25
Independent	1	10.0

Even with this victory, it's likely that Ohio State will be ranked behind Oregon—as long as the Ducks win—and TCU. Arizona State might even remain ahead of the Buckeyes after the Sun Devils' victory over Notre Dame.

The Big Ten has a perception problem. The SEC surpassed it a few years ago, and the Pac-12 is deeper from top to bottom. The Big 12 has arguably leapfrogged the Big Ten as well.

Members of the selection committee can talk about not bringing conference strength/perception into the discussion, but that's nearly impossible when judging the quality of a potential top-four team.

Grantland's Matt Hinton wrote a great examination of the Big Ten and how exactly it arrived at this point. He argued that the clash between the Buckeyes and Spartans "exists in a kind of vacuum" outside of the national eye because the Big Ten remains an afterthought in the national discussion.

Ohio State lost to a now 4-5 Virginia Tech team, while Michigan State was dominated in the second half by Oregon. And beating Nebraska wouldn't register much for the Buckeyes since the Cornhuskers' best win so far was at home against Miami.

Hinton said that he had previously tried to defend the Big Ten from undue criticism, but the conference's decline is plain for everyone to see:

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Such are the calculations that are so often misread as "bias" in a system that is (1) based largely on drawing conclusions from indirect and frequently contradictory comparisons, and (2) ill-suited to informing said comparisons. I spent years battling the assumption that the Big Ten was gathering rust or that the SEC was pulling away, which were two sides of the same annoying argument. Both conclusions struck me as shallow, anecdotal, and dubious. Gradually, though, the perception has become such an undeniable reality that the Big Ten commissioner himself has been forced to own up to it every time his conference has gotten sand kicked in its face. (Jim) Delany doesn't even bother to describe the malaise as "cyclical" anymore. Until further notice, it's just the way things are.

"

It's not impossible for Ohio State to get into the top four, but in order for that to happen, the Buckeyes will almost certainly need both Oregon and Arizona State to lose in the Pac-12 and then TCU to fall in the Big 12.

Then again, OSU might have swayed the selection committee with its decisive victory.

With the way that this season has unfolded, Ohio State fans shouldn't begin to panic. By the time all is said and done, the Buckeyes could be the only one-loss conference champion outside of an unbeaten Florida State.