This is one of the most painful losses I have ever experienced as a sports fan. This is far and away the most painful REGULAR SEASON loss I have ever experienced. Why does this hurt so much? We still have a real shot at getting to the MAC Championship and winning that damn thing, we still are going to a bowl game and hopefully winning our second bowl game in history, and we are still a 7-1 Ohio University Bobcats football team. If you said we would be in that situation in the beginning of the season I would have been elated. So again, why does this hurt so much? Well its all about what could have been. For the first time ever I fell in love with college football. For years I have been a college football hater because the little schools have no chance and Ohio has never been relevant. Don't get me wrong, I still would watch every OU game but I would have no interest in anything else in the college football landscape. Now I see why people love this sport. These past two months have been an absolute blast. Ohio was on peoples' minds. For once we weren't just some mid-major school that will maybe get to a meaningless bowl game that no one but us Bobcat lovers care about. No. We were very much cared about. By everyone. To the point where we were the #24 team in this whole nation with a chance to bust the BCS and be everyones "little team that could." And because of this I found myself interested in college football in a way that I never had before. I loved to love college football. And now I feel that it is all gone. No more watching CFB Daily on ESPNU hoping to hear OUr name pop up in conversation even just once. No more getting excited for the Sunday polls to come out to see where we lay amongst all the other top teams. No more BCS buster talk. And that is a sad sad thing. Even if Tettleton found Foster in the back of the endzone at the buzzer or if we pulled out the W in overtime there was still ZERO guarantee that we would be that undefeated BCS buster team. Odds are we wouldn't have been. But I never wanted this feeling of such hope and excitement to end. Even just one more week would have been unbelievable. But now it is over and we still have MAC Championship aspirations, but right now all I can think about is what could have been.

9-3 or 10-2 is not a failure at all. I would take that every single year. I was just saying it was a lot of fun to be nationally recognized for a couple of months

We have zero shot of returning to the top 25. Zero.

not dissappointed in the loss, only the way we lost.  nonetheless, still a great season.  anyone who thinks 7-1 is the end of the world obviously did not live through the 70s, 80s, most of the 90s and the 00s until frank arrived. 

My guess is 10-2.  hope we do better.  but 10-2 would be a tremendous season.

Not a relevant comparison. They've got a much better resume overall and a very close loss against another top team. We scored 20 points against a bottom 20 defense.

I think we can be back in the top 25 if we win out and if we do it will be a great season.  However, up until yesterday, we were on track for an incredible season.  I still hope we win out, but that was a deflating loss.  Now instead of talking about BCS games and seeing Ohio on the bottom line, we don't even control out own destiny.  I just wanted one more week...and for it not to end with Fiami.

I have to agree. It's very possible we play a ranked Kent State team on the road to finish out the year, and if things play to our advantage and we win out the rest of the season, we have a great opportunity to play another ranked NIU/Toledo in the MAC championship.  Two wins against ranked conference teams will do wonders for our credibility, despite the loss to Miami.  It will.  

I had to stay away from the board all day because that loss hurt, but it's time now to refocus and win that MAC championship.  The ranking was a lot of fun, but I think I'll appreciate the future ranking even more if it means we did it by beating the best teams in our conference.  If we get it again, we will definitely deserve it. 

Of course, this is if everything goes our way. 

We have a shot to get back in the top 25 only because our conference has put up some good wins against BCS competition.  La Tech got back in because they have such an amazing QB that is garnering alot of interest. 

Try being a Cleveland sports fan.  We suffer one of these kind of heartbreaking losses every other year (I'd say yearly except that we never have a good sports team two years in a row).