Coming off a good year for them, did they lose a ton of talent?
I don't know much about them, but remember hearing how great they were in such a tough SEC last year. 4-4 in conference total, not a bottom dweller...middle of the pack.
Obviously you can't extrapolate too much year to year, but to have a 4-4 SEC team the previous year lose to a 1-7 MAC team from the previous year is pretty embarrassing.
This guy predicted them to go to a Jan 3rd bowl, if he has any knowledge of the SEC they must be returning at least some talent from last year.
http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/87391/sec-bowl-projections-preseason?ex_cid=espnapi_public
To your point, I disagree completely. They absolutely stake their claim based on middle and bottom teams, specifically how they compare to middle and bottom teams in the 'lower' conferences. that is the entire premise of the week in and week out statements. They claim they don't get the break like a Boise or UCF gets.
All that being said, obviously this is one game, no one is going to claim the MAC is better than the SEC. But, the original posters point is valid, these kinds of losses absolutely are what the P5 has to avoid to justify their exclusionary practices.