While you say many of those teams are good, it's also true that Ohio State has only been behind in the second half 3-4 times in the last few years until the bowl game. Because of that, you saw in last years Ted Ginn return and Wells run that Ohio State DOES have the players to play with LSU/Florida/SEC teams, they don't have the mental toughness that comes with playing wars every week. Look at Florida's 2006 season. Look how many teams they beat in the second-half/4th quarter. Same with LSU this year. They fought WARS. Only war Ohio State was in besides the Illinois game was Wisconsin, and 'sconsin wasn't that good this year (I'd put them in a tier with Cincinatti , to quote a Big East example).

Hopefully Rodriquez going to Michigan will force many teams to change they way they recruit in the future, or else it's probably going to be a 4-horse race for the rest of the decade. Conversely, SEC is at worst a 6-team race (LSU,Alabama,Auburn,Florida,Georgia,Tennessee) at best a 10-team race (Mississippi St,Arkansas,Kentucky,South Carolina).