Sure but their promotion is not deciding which teams get in the playoff. That’s the unfounded conspiracy people are talking about. If they were really picking winners and losers from their favorite conferences then Georgia would have rightfully gotten in.
Maybe not directly, but people are going to watch what is promoted. TV ratings (and in turn, advertising sales) influence future media rights negotiations. The CFP sells the rights for the games and they are going to want to maximize the bids. If unpopular matchups come out of the committee room, they will hear about it one way or another, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the advertising that can be sold.
The CFP has a contract with ESPN through the mid-2020s, but there is talk of expanding to an 8-team playoff, with would open up negotiations again and the CFP would have to buyout the ESPN deal to get out of the contract if they want to go elsewhere or pay ESPN a lot of money for the extra round of games (increasing the playoff inventory from 3 games to 7 games). So while ESPN is already on the hook for the remainder of the 4-team playoff contract and there is nothing they can do to directly affect the committee's selection, they can choose to promote change in the system or talk about teams that should have gotten in to create public controversy over the validity of the selection process.
The CFP's media rights decision would become a trade off proposition whether to buyout the ESPN contract (and whatever penalties are associated) or play nice and give ESPN matchups that are more lucrative for their business model. ESPN isn't just interested in the CFP matchups, but their ability to promote the other games for which they have rights (don't forget they own a sizable chunk of the SEC Network). So the opposite could also be argued that the CFP is also interested in producing a field that is attractive to multiple potential media partners if they want to expand to an 8-team field and buyout the ESPN contract.
Or the committee could just be doing their best to evaluate teams' accomplishments, strengths, and weaknesses and the fact that there is a multi-billion dollar
($5.64 billion over 12 years) plus decades of institutional thought and evolution on what constitutes metrics for best teams (given the small sample size of the college football season), perennial contenders, demographics, scheduling practices, etc., has no influence whatsoever. Combine the monetary value of the CFP with the scarcity of qualification, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think there would be factors outside of on-field performance influencing a committee (or at least debate into the thought process and discussions that occur inside the committee room).
Tangentially, what does a G5 team need to do to qualify for the playoff given the schedule strength imbalance whether by choice, blackballing, or bureaucratic prejudice? Keep in mind when the CFP started, they stated they wanted to see strong non-conference scheduling, which I believe was direction to tell P5 teams to schedule other P5 teams in the non-conference and left fewer strong P5 vs. strong G5 scheduling opportunities because they are such a risky proposition for the P5 team.
Regarding "Georgia would have rightfully gotten in", the committee conveniently says they want the four "best" teams and makes their criteria somewhat fluid from year to year. I don't believe that isn't by design.
The rub with Georgia (11-2) is "best" vs. "most deserving". While recruiting rankings and pushing Alabama to the limit twice in 11 months would indicate they are one of the "best" teams in the country, how many would call them more deserving than Notre Dame (12-0) and Oklahoma (12-1), having most recently defeated the only team who beat them) going into the bowls? If you look at Post 23 in this thread, since the 2005 Orange Bowl (Oklahoma vs. USC, 13.7 rating; Auburn and Utah also went undefeated that season, and Boise State was undefeated entering bowl season), the lowest-rated national title game was the LSU-Alabama rematch in the Sugar Bowl after the 2011 season (14.0 rating). Perhaps the powers that be took into consideration that ratings may be higher if there is a new matchup rather than having Alabama and Georgia play for a second time in the same month (assuming Georgia would have been the 4 seed) and third time in 12 months.
Anyway, I'll take my tinfoil hat off now.
Really went off my rocker with this post.
