... Alabama to the wire in the national championship game.

I know what you're saying - "at the time of the game" - but I think with Watson & Lawson etc, it was pretty apparant that Clemson team was exceptional when we played them at their place in October.

Plus, much like Kelly blew the Northwestern game in 2014 by mismanaging the two-point conversion strategy, he did it again less than a year later at Death Valley - albeit with much higher stakes. We were ranked 6th at the time.

So let's never miss a good opportunity to remind people our coach is a moron.

Nobody knew Clemson would have the season(s) they were about to have, but they were #12, we were #6 and College Gameday was there. It was a big deal. That's in contrast to, for example, 2013 Michigan State, when they were unranked and we were #22 at the time of the game and it was a bore.

I do think end of season ranking is more important in judging an opponent, but "time of game" has a bit of a place too, as far as managing hype/emotions/the big stage. Probably like a 70/30 split to me in terms of determining how big a win ends up being (and of course, games near the end of the season have less variance between those two variables).