The committee could make their job real easy if they just follow the BCS template. A lot of their issues last year is they had some really dumb rankings in their penultimate rankings, which understandably upset a lot of people as they tried to correct themselves.
If they follow the BCS template, then SMU will be 7, Alabama will be 11, South Carolina will be 12 and Miami will be 13.
This is almost a lock for Alabama. Yes, the committee said the loser of a conference championship will not be "unduly" punished, but in 2023 defending champs Georgia still fell from 1 to 6 after a close loss to the current #4 team. Of course teams will fall if they lose in the conference championship game, that's obvious the question is just how far. It's hard to imagine SMU losing and staying ahead of Alabama, especially if you consider who they'd be losing to (a team that lost to both South Carolina and Alabama).
This makes the committee's job very easy. This won't be an ACC vs. SEC thing, this will be an SEC thing vs. SEC thing, which will then be decided by head to head. Even if SMU loses, you just place them below South Carolina, which makes perfect sense considering South Carolina just beat Clemson. It's actually really simple.
The scenario Heather seemed to allude to was if the committee goes full on stupid. In that case it would be Miami 11 and Alabama 12. Then her scenario comes into play, which is that Clemson actually needs to beat SMU for Alabama to have a shot.
It's actually a potentially really messy scenario for the committee though, as a Clemson victory would wreak havoc on their entire rankings. For instance, if Clemson just beat SMU and is the best team in the ACC, don't they need to be ranked above both SMU and Miami?
In that case, a case which would be bolstered by a Georgia win, the potential for Alabama, South Carolina and Clemson to all leap up as a pack does come into play, and the committee's adherence to head to head could precipitate this.
So, for instance it could be #11 Alabama, #12 South Carolina, #13 Clemson, #14 SMU, #15 Miami (I'm leaving out the Big 12 but you get the idea). Now that would involve pushing an idle Miami team down several spots, but what would you do with Miami in this scenario, just claim they are the best ACC team anyway? So the committee has a clean path or a potentially messy path, let's see which they chose.