re: LSU moves up one spot to # 12 in AP poll

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I'd bet my house that the playoff committee doesn't give one ounce of credibility to some silly media voter poll or "coach's" (read: Grad Assistant) poll.

Polls are a relic from the past. They were silly then, and they're silly and (thankfully) irrelevant now.

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The CFP rankings are always very close to the polls when they come out every year. The polls at midseason and at the end are driven by the preseason polls in terms of the order of teams with the same records, as two teams with the same record at any given time during the season will usually be ranked in the same order relative to each other that they were in the preseason. Preseason polls are very much influenced by the preseason picks of the media, and usually come out almost identical to the composite of preseason publication rankings.

Being picked high in offseason/preseason predictions = being ranked high in preseason polls = remaining ranked high in the polls relative to other teams with your same record throughout the season = being ranked high in the CFP rankings relative to teams with your same record.

If Team A and Team B are exactly the same team, play exactly the same schedule and produce exactly the same results, and if the composite of offseason media picks had Team A picked higher than Team B, there's about a 80% or more chance Team A will be ranked ahead of Team B in the CFP rankings.

Thinking that polls or even preseason predictions by media are irrelevant requires ignoring an awful lot of historical data that very strongly suggest otherwise.