They aren’t though. Teams get artificially inflated because of preseason rankings and they can ride it all the way to the playoffs if they have a weak schedule.
This is true.
Plus the CFBPC are flawed humans who at least subconsciously allow the AP and Coaches poll to affect how they rank teams too.
Too many poll voters don’t even watch enough of the games if they watch at all and then rank them by who knows what method.
So you have the blind influencing the blind.
Look at last years Final Regular Season Rankings.
The Top 5 are exactly the same and almost the Top 10 save for a few spots.
If it weren’t for all the stupid ranking and seeding guidelines last season the rankings going into the playoffs would have been almost the same.
In the end two things are true.
1) The CFBPC is swayed by and influenced by the Polls all year so they do matter
2) For the Seedings in the Final Selection the CFBPC just makes things up to create specific matchups even contradictory to what they’ve said the previous weeks so then the Polls don’t matter.