I'll throw out some hot takes.
One, the conference system as we see it is failing. People dog ND and say they are the ones that need to change but in reality, the conferences now are too big, too insular, etc. It results in unbalanced schedules, teams being overvalued/propped up, etc. I don't now h how you fix it in this age of conference and TV revenues, but the reality is that the size of conferences are creating problems that I am not sure how you fix short of tearing apart the existing conference landscape.
Two, it's time people stop rewarding the SEC just because they are the SEC. Now that doesn't mean they aren't a great conference, they are. But they aren't the SEC of 5-7-10 years ago. atlantacowboy bristled when this discussion came up in another thread and his proof for the dominance of the SEC was recruiting classes and the number of 5 stars/high 4 stars that go to SEC schools. And that is true, the SEC still tends to recruit better than most other schools save for some of the bluebloods like OSU, ND, etc. But this isn't the 90s anymore. The landscape of college football has shifted due to the portal. Bama and UGA and the like can't stockpile 5 stars anymore because they can easily move for more money and more opportunity to play. So when Bama signs a 5 star DT this year and then signs another next year, one of those guys may say down the road that they can go to Indiana or TT and play more than they would splitting time at Bama. Plus, in the portal realm, these programs now have the ability to easily pluck some three star kid at a middling program who just developed into a stud. So while Bama might be adding a 5 star CB, Indiana might be adding some former 3 star CB who has developed into a total experienced big time player. The gap between the SEC and the rest of the college football world has shrunk. It just has.
And this gets back to my insular comment above. As teams move away from quality OOC games and focus on conference schedules that are often imbalanced, there is a faux sense of accomplishment beating up other "ranked" teams in one's conference and it just becomes some sort of circular overvalued sense of accomplishment. OU was a nice team. They were not a great team. They got a lot of mileage out of some wins in the SEC that frankly, were nice wins but likely overrated teams. But they are SEC teams so they get a bumb just by that alone. Texas was better than OU. Texas was likely better than Bama. ND was better than Bama. But Bama had the SEC mystique on them and there was no way the committee was going to leave out Bama for the 2nd year in a row despite Bama looking like slop for much of November. The fact they got lucky and drew OU in round 1 doesn't change that fact.
TT deserved to be there. They were the Big 12 champ. But the fact they lost today as they did should not surprise anyone. UO was the first big time program they faced all year. The Big 12 was largely overrated. BYU claims of deserving the playoffs were odd to me. They got smoked TWICE by TT. They were not better than Texas. Or ND. Someone noted on X that the Big 12 had zero quality OOC wins. That's an issue.
I am not sure how to fix all of this but I have some crazy ideas like mandating certain criteria for OOC games so we can see some sort of comparison between conferences. Dump the committees that have clear bias and go back to more a BCS style selection. Kill the early polls.
