Those teams would have been O, Georgia, Texas, and PSU.
1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8. Which demonstrates that the committee can't even count to twelve. Boise, who the committee ranked as the ninth-best team, were included in the top four with a bye as an affirmative action selection as the best shit conference team. Arizona State, twelfth-best in the committee's estimation, was made fourth with a bye also.
O is gone, the other three are alive. With the four best teams O would have played PSU, two B1G teams, O would have won; Georgia would have played Texas for a THIRD time this season, Georgia would have won and we would already have had the natty game, O vs UGA, the winners of the two best conferences in the land, the B1G and the SEC. That game would have been a dumhinger.
The committee's five-through-twelve were not worthy to compete for a national championship and should not have been allowed to compete for it. As if to prove the point, Clemson, Tennessee, SMU, and Indiana promptly went out and got thrashed. The integrity of the system is the real victim; the legitimacy of the eventual national champion, too. We have instead a final four comprising a fifth-ranked team and a sixth-ranked team, the latter having made the semi-finals by wasting the committee's over-all number one. You get, with twelve teams and the committee's lack of facility with arithmetic mismatches and easier paths to the natty. PSU lucked into SMU (10th), who they killed 38-10, and Boise (9th), 31-14.
We have as a result 1) games that, so far, with the exception of Tex.-ASU, have been non-competitive and boring. 2) selections that do violence to the notion of having earned the right to compete for the natty. The sub-four teams are not deserving of competing for a national championship. One of them reasonably may win it.
