always have a team like Alabama where you can always create hypotheticals that they are the best team.
Many predictive rankings bake in last season results and recruiting rankings so what actually happens on the field gets weighted even less.
doesn't matter if they've lost more games than everyone else or lost to Vanderbilt or just got blown out to OU because they are still supposed to be "good".
Ultimately — the "playoff" with 12 teams is much improved but it is still more of an invitational right now. Too few teams are able to participate and judgment based on really small sample sizes.