Agreed. ESPN still peddles a ton of influence, & their alignment with the SEC is now clearly a conflict of interest when it comes to them being an objective voice.
The whole argument that Bama should’ve been included is the best evidence of this yet. They’re essentially saying that only certain games matter and framing it with this Best vs. Most Deserving argument. These are the same people that also got behind the early losses are less damaging than late season losses and particularly bad losses are resume killers. Now, with Bama, neither of those matters. There’s not a single one of those talking heads that said Bama would lose to Vandy or OU, not one. But they just know Bama would be a better playoff option. They’ll cry about TCU’s drubbing by Georgia, while failing to acknowledge that TCU did actually win a game to be there. So the logic is that somehow the Michigan team that lost to TCU in an actual game would have been a better opponent for Georgia, we just know it.
You can’t have an honest intellectual discussion about strength of schedule if you won’t even mention that Bama is never going to Boise or Fort Worth or Stillwater. We’re never seeing a home and home with Georgia again. The only way those schools play any teams like us or SMU, etc… is in Atlanta or Dallas. So you’ve got talking heads who know this, but won’t acknowledge it, poking holes in teams‘schedules as though the teams can truly do something about it. It’s nonsensical.
ESPN has essentially become one of the news networks that’s tied to their base and is just clearly so one sided that you know where they’re going to fall on every point of debate.