In the unlikely event that either Alabama or Florida State drop a game, Ohio State and Baylor will each have very good arguments that they deserve to move into the top two of the BCS standings. Through 12 weeks, Baylor ranks higher than Ohio State in the SRS ratings thanks to a higher margin of victory and strength of schedule. But I want to delve into the SOS argument a little bit more today.

First, let’s just assume each team wins out, even though that’s no sure thing. Ohio State defeated Indiana today, but still must beat Michigan and Michigan State. Baylor plays Oklahoma State tonight, and then has Texas Tech and Texas to close the year. But let’s assume both schools finish the year undefeated: who will have faced the harder schedule?

Baylor plays every team in the Big 12 — giving the Bears 9 conference games — and faced Buffalo, an FCS school, and a Sun Belt school (Louisiana-Monroe). Ohio State will also play 9 conference games, including the Big 10 championship — and conveniently also played Buffalo and an FCS school, along with a Mountain West team (San Diego State), and California.

We can obviously throw out the games against Buffalo and the FCS school. Louisiana-Monroe ranks 106th and Cal ranks 96th, so those two games are a wash. Since beating San Diego State (78th in the SRS) is nothing special, picking between Baylor and OSU predictably turns into a referendum on the Big 12 and Big 10. So let’s look at the SRS ratings of each of the conference opponents and San Diego State for the Buckeyes and Bears.

Here’s how to read the first line. The toughest opponent for Baylor (after adjusting for home field) is Oklahoma State, who Baylor plays tonight in Stillwater. The Cowboys have an SRS rating of 54.8. The toughest opponent for Ohio State was Wisconsin, who the Buckeyes played at home, and the Badgers have an SRS rating of 57.4. After accounting for home field, that means Baylor’s toughest game was 3.4 points harder than Ohio State’s (54.8 + 3 – (57.4 -3) ).

By this measure, Baylor’s toughest two games were harder than Ohio State’s toughest two games (although if you ignore home field, you’d argue that Ohio State faced the toughest opponent). Ohio State gets credit for having the third toughest game, but at each of the next three slots, the Bears have the SOS edge.

At the bottom of the schedule, the Buckeyes pick up some ground, but I don’t think the back end of the schedule is the appropriate mechanism to separate national title contenders. Yeah, Illinois, Penn State, San Diego State and Purdue is a tougher set than West Virginia/Kansas State/Iowa State, but any elite team should have no problem sweeping those games.

It’s very close, but if Baylor wins out, I’d vote for Baylor over Ohio State. The Bears clearly have the edge if you take style points into consideration, but even if you ignore margin of victory and all the statistics, I still think Baylor’s season is more impressive.  It’s close, but I’d say that an average great team would have had a harder time going undefeated against Baylor’s schedule than it would against Ohio State’s schedule.