re: So how do yall see this selection committee settling out?

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A committee, however, is different.

With the Coaches and Harris polls, members are located all over the country. They never convene, and instead submit their ballots online the night before the polls are released.

A committee, though? That convenes, discusses, and deliberates over important decisions? Members, in such a scenario, can be bought. They can be influenced. They can be removed and replaced.

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Exactly correct. We are talking about a sport where there are numerous documented instances of rabid boosters and crooked coaches paying tens of thousands of dollars to woo high school recruits who may or may not contribute to actually victory on the field. How much would these same nefarious individuals be willing to pay for the vote of someone who will certainly impact the playoff selection? And of course, there are innumerable more subtle ways to influence committee members outside of crass, blatant cash payments.

Why in god's name should the fate of the sport rest in the hands of a select few interested parties who will deliberate in an entirely opaque process behind closed doors?

Without a fixed, articulated criteria, these people could select playoff teams on any arbitrary basis that appeals to them. For example, they could choose a Pac-12 team over an SEC team for the fourth slot because they feel "it's time for someone different to win the championship" or because they perceive that regional diversity might be good for the popularity of the sport. Someone else might choose ND instead of a more worthy team because of some long-buried emotional attachment to South Bend or Catholicism. There are literally an infinite number of completely inapposite factors that could come into play. And these factors won't be offset by a large pool of voters or by computer rankings or by any other objective criteria.

I just think it's nuts.