I don’t like the way the SEC protects the potential playoff teams, but the PAC-12 shows what happens when a conference doesn’t go out of its way to protect their top teams. No PAC-12 team has made the playoffs for four years in a row, which will grow to 5 this season. Not sure they had a deserving team each year, but I would have expected the officials to “help” Oregon today. Now, Oregon got their butt kicked and maybe their wasn’t a way to help them that much. If a similar late season situation had occurred in the SEC, there is no way the league would have let the potential playoff team lose the game. There is way too much money at stake in the process. Since 2015, only the SEC and the ACC have a had a team in every playoff. The SEC had two teams in the playoffs in 2018.