In the ancient contest between merit and outcome, college football's weekly poll once again chose the scoreboard over the story behind it. Texas rose to the summit after a razor-thin victory over Ohio State, while the Buckeyes fell five places for having nearly won against the nation's best team on the road — a punishment that lays bare the quiet contradiction between what voters say they value and how they actually vote. The poll's verdict this week is less a ranking of teams than a mirror held up to the sport's deepest instinct: that winning, however narrowly, is everything, and losing, howe