quote:
That means the committee is willing to say to a group of people who represent a variety of conferences and levels of competition we believe the second best team in the SEC without a conference championship is better than these two Power 5 conference champions, who are both 12-1. They’d be willing to say that?

If LSU loses and the Big 12 and Pac 12 have 1 loss conf. champions then they will be screaming all night about "SEC bias" and how ridiculous it is to have a non-conf. champ in over TWO conf. champs with the same record. They will also yell that this would be the third time in nine years a non-conf. champ from the SEC would get into the playoff/championship game: 2011 (Bama), 2017 (Bama), 2019 (LSU)

Is the committee willing to accept the inevitable backlash and criticism that would come from putting LSU in? Or would they take the easy way out?

Remember, 2011 we still had the BCS...so the criticism could be blamed on the "computers" and poll voters for putting Bama in over Ok. St. and/or Stanford.

In 2017 Auburn, who beat both Bama and UGA in the regular season got fricked by having to play in the SECCG. They were "in" the CFP before the SECCG, but were forced to give UGA another shot to beat them. But the bigger screw job may have been done to Wisconsin.

Wisconsin was in nearly the same exact scenario as LSU going into the Big 10 championship game. They were 12-0 and ranked in the top 4 of the CFP rankings. Ultimately, they lost to OSU and Alabama jumped into their spot by doing NOTHING buy sitting at home and watching. Wisconsin was "penalized" for having to play a 13th game

Partly due to the nature of the system, the committee never has any consistent logic to their decisions. They make largely subjective decisions and try to rationalize them on the back end. Thus, while I think LSU has done OBJECTIVELY more than the 2017 Wisconsin team and this year's OU, Utah and Baylor teams, is it really implausible to foresee the committee leaving LSU out simply to avoid criticism?