And this goes back to my original point - we cant possibly comprehend all the machinations of a complete football season at once. Before you know it, you have gone 10 degrees of separation and forgot where you started...team A beat team B who beat team C but lost to team D etc etc...and thats not even considering how those games were played.
Aside from the Georgia win, which can he viewed as being negated by getting blown out by the same team to end the season, what other wins did they have that were truly impressive? Comparatively, were there times that they simply looked non-competitive in certain games? Clearly the answer is yes (also true of BYU).
Ultimately, none of it is actually related to wins or losses. I truly think Alabama could have lost by 40+ in the SEC championship game and still wouldn't have dropped. It was all predetermined at least two weeks prior.
I agree with your very last point, that none of the "data" really mattered and there were other reasons for putting Bama in, but in terms of the public case that was debated, wanting to exclude BYU or Alabama really relied on "metrics." Once you start comparing losses and getting into margin of defeat, those are just "metrics" that computer models already bake into their rankings.
One of the pro-Alabama contingent's loudest talking points was SOS, but SOS is already accounted for in the computer models, you don't need to isolate that metric, unless you're cherry picking for a reason.
CFB, as InKellyWeTrust noted, is not the NFL, there's too many teams with too much variance in SOS, talent levels, etc. There's a ton of noise, and the models help to weed through all of that noise. This is why the BCS system was fine and we should have just kept it for the playoffs. The "problem" with the computers is they cannot be lobbied, pressured, or bribed.
Switching to a committee was sold as a "human touch" that could apply "common sense" and "provide flexibility." Those are code words for exactly what we saw on Sunday.
And there's no need to fear analytics. This same debate was had over the past 15 years or so in MLB and the most analytically savvy franchises in the Majors consistently perform the best and a team like the Dodgers that merged it with a large, smartly spent payroll, has won back to back titles and has been the most consistently great franchise in the game over the past decade plus.
