The polls were working just fine for the Big XII until BYU, Iowa State, and Colorado wet the bed in consecutive weeks to a team that, to that point, had only beaten Lindenwood (LOL) and Houston.
And, lest we pretend that Kansas is some uber-talented giant-killer, they were decisively eliminated from bowl competition in their do-or-die game by Baylor.
The Big XII is getting no love because it got run through by a bad team, not because of preseason polling bias (the Playoff Committee doesn't even have rankings for the first two months of the season).