The thing is the more debates took place, the more heavily people started to lean in Alabama's favor. It takes a lot of strong bias to overcome that. For instance, ESPN ended up polling all their "experts" and it was 24 in favor of Alabama and 11 in favor of Ohio State. That's lopsided, and I bet if you asked the 11 most of them would make the conference champion a key part of their argument. So when you remove the conference champion part, there's really not much of a discussion to be had. If Ohio State had beaten Oklahoma they would be in. If they'd beaten Iowa they'd be in. They lost, they're out, and it's the right thing to do. If Alabama hadn't come back against Miss. State, they'd be out. But they won and it counts. That's how it is supposed to work.