and expressed it in the past, in particular with respect to Gary Danielson's insistence on CBS broadcasts of the SEC in 2015 that, effectively, only conference champions were intended to be in the playoffs. But last week when visiting with a former law prof of mine he made your point, "Nowhere in the protocol does is state the relative importance of these criteria with respect to one another." The only guidance the Committee has weighting the criteria is the preamble's emphasis on limiting the Committee's "flexibility and discretion to select a non-champion or independent" to "unequivocally one of the four best teams in the country." He also pointed out, there is an inherent ambiguity, if not contradiction, between comparable and unequivocal. If, for example, ND and putative B10 champion Michigan are comparable so that the would-be tie-breakers apply, how could ND be unequivocally better? A is comparable to B and A is unequivocally better than B seem contradictory.
In any case, at least you are now considering the conference championship criterion and its current absence from the rankings, which is more than you can say for Mr. Farmer.