No final 4 selection is going to fully make sense and the committee has their hands full with the nightmare scenario they thought they would never get (and why they are going to a 12-team playoff next year) but here it is in the final year of the 4-team play format - Oh the poetic justice. The 12-team will be a much better format to capture the best team in CF each year (although I'm sure there'll still be arguments over team 11 through 14, etc.). The other important factor for the current format that the 12-team format also will help address is the long 4-week (was 5+ weeks for the old BCS 2-team playoff) time off that each team gets. For the 12-team format, playoffs start within 3 weeks and there's a bigger gauntlet of games to go through to win it all. So, as you're all making the assessment that FSU is not in the same league as the others, I think you have to remember this important factor. We're all dissing FSU but maybe Rodemaker gets healthy and with such a long time to scheme and prepare, they're a much different and better team in a month; it truly does become a whole new, different season in many ways that's hard to predict how teams will play then vs now, so you do truly have to look at the entire season, although yes, how you're trending now is important, but again, now they get 4 weeks off which is a long time. So before you have the committee write off FSU, just maybe they have shown enough to be given an opportunity and the potential to be a much better team in the playoff. Not saying this with certainty, but you don't know. Same of course for GA for sure. Thankfully, these issues all go away next year. For the years with a Burrow-led LSU or Lawrence-led Clemson team that were clear front runners, this stuff doesn't matter as much, but I always think if there was a 12-team format back in 2002, USC under Carroll and with Carson Palmer at QB, could definitely have been a 2-loss team that could have won the whole thing that year. I also remember the 2017 Alabama team that lost to GA in the SEC Championship game but made it to the 4-team playoff nonetheless. I remember thinking how is it fair that Saban and AL get an extra week on top of an already long month to rest up and prepare for the CF Playoff? And of course, they won the 2018 CF Championship! Just something to think about in this last year of the 4-team playoff format. I certainly don't envy the committee's job this year.
(Just conveniently ignore the 10 point loss, at home, to Texas, and the muffed punt + Hail Mary needed in Alabama’s final regular season game needed to beat an Auburn team that was just eviscerated by New Mexico State)
