The hill I will die on is the one where I try to explain that the goal of the CFB playoff committee is not to determine the four best teams but rather to find the four teams that will result in the highest ratings. Better ratings = more ad $ = more $$$$ and that is the only goal.
There is obviously a threshold of "how good this team is" for them to make it since nobody cares to watch the 4-7 USC Trojans and so in that sense the games matter, but once you reach that threshold they are going to pick the team with the highest potential for ratings.
The selection process they provide is entirely subjective and arbitrary. They cite things such as conference championships, strength of schedule, best loss, how they finished, where they were ranked previously, eye test, etc but they list all of those things because CFB by nature is hard to compare conference to conference (it's too large to get any meaningful understanding of where each conference is compared to each other before bowls) and they will almost always be able to point to one of those things to explain why big name school should get in over less big name school.
Let's have some examples:
2014: First year of the playoff. TCU and Ohio State are both 12-1. TCU's loss was @ 12-1 Baylor by 3 on a last second field goal. Ohio State's loss was against 6-6 Virginia Tech by 14. TCU's strength of schedule was the 9th hardest in the country while Ohio State's was 33rd (
source. TCU went into the last week of the regular season ranked #3, won 55-3, and dropped two spots. The committee took Ohio State and cited "Conference Champions" as their reason.
2015: Oklahoma and Iowa end the year with 1 loss. Oklahoma ends 11-1 while Iowa ended the regular season 12-0 before losing 16-13 in the Big 10 title game to #5 ranked Michigan State. Oklahoma's loss was to 5-7 Texas. We have established last year that the Big 12 conference "champion" doesn't count because it's not a title game. So these two teams - by the committee's definition the year before - are on equal footing on that front. The Iowa loss is significantly better than Oklahoma's but it doesn't matter. Oklahoma gets invited instead.
2016: A clean cut year where no arguments can be made for anyone other than the 4 conference champions with 1 loss.
2017: Alabama loses to Auburn 26-14 to lose their division. Auburn goes on to lose the SEC championship game to Georgia. Suddenly "Conference Champions" doesn't matter. Ohio State, who was coming off of a Conference Championship victory against #3 Wisconsin, was left out. Meanwhile, UCF went undefeated. They were the only team in the country to do that. If "Conference Champions" were such a massive factor that they overwrite a better SOS, a better loss, and finishing the season better, then when Alabama gets picked over Ohio State the only thing that can mean logically is that number of losses - even just one when you don't have to play a conference title and the other team does - overrides them all. Except the only undefeated team was left out as well.
So what's the answer? Well, ratings. Ohio State gets more viewers than TCU. Oklahoma gets more than Iowa. Alabama gets more viewers than Ohio State and UCF. It's the only common denominator among the picks from the committee year to year. We shifted from an emotionless algorithm to a subjective group of people that still rank LSU high because "losing close at florida is like a win".
The NCAA trails only FIFA in the "this **** is obviously corrupt and ****ty but it's an institution now and we can either enjoy the sport with it's obvious bias and flaws or not get to watch it at all" category. We always choose the first.