I think there is enough noise in the records and teams with bad losses that they will build the bracket they want and can point to any specific piece of data to justify it.
I’ve seen people make the case that osu should be as high as 5 (which is absurd to reward them for that loss to um), Texas as low as 8 & psu as low as 9 having to play at Tennessee.
If they want the conference championships to mean anything, and to not make lane kiffin right, and to not have teams in a good spot try to game the rankings by intentionally losing their last game to avoid the conference championships, Texas can’t be lower than 6 and psu can’t be lower than 7. And that’s if you think ND should be 5. If they really want to show that teams won’t be punished for playing in a conference championship game, Texas has to be 5 and psu has to be 6. Moving Texas or psu below 6 is doing exactly what they said they weren’t going to do by punishing teams for losing their conference championship.
I think the only bracket that makes sense by not punishing teams in conference championships and avoiding uga-ut and psu-ore rematches is:
5. Texas - smu
6. psu - clemson
7. nd - iu
8. osu - tenn