Three SEC teams? NO. No conference should have that many. If you can’t even make your conference championship game being at least the top two in conference, then you shouldn’t be in the playoffs. Especially when you have a conference like the SEC that is scared to play real competition in the non-con.
I think I saw today that Georgia hadn’t played anyone ranked higher than 19 until Alabama. If true, then why was everyone just assuming the were so awesome?
I’m wondering why all the love and admiration for Cincy. Probably only played one team in the top 20 as well.
The trouble with using polls as a starting point for selecting a champion is their largely based on the eye test of a few influential writers/commentators etc and so on whose opinions get broadcasted across the country and then color the views of the voters. Few voters could possibly closely watch all the games of all the teams to be fairly thorough.
If Miss America were chosen by a large panel of judges who only looked at ten or twelve of the fifty and took the word of the other judges on the rest, if may not be a fair and accurate choice.
The better method it seems to me is a random scheduling of a more manageable number of teams via 4 or 8 or even 16 group winners.
I get that conference intra-competition is fiscally desired but it introduces bias and human influence over free and fair competition. Most agree the best way to determine whose best is to play head to head on the field. Can’t be done with Football with well over 100 teams and a practical limit of 15 (20 might be max?) game season.
Dividing into groups (divisions & leagues) helps somewhat but the scheduling must be fixed by having outside authority - NCAA for ex - by random draw, pick the games & teams for a preset future (20 years or so) so that over time everybody plays everybody, home and away.
You don’t schedule a national championship, you must earn it. Group membership rotates.