Baylor finished 5 and TCU finished 6 in the final CFP poll
You are right and I think that it is worth noting how that all came about:
By the time the initial CFP rankings were released TCU (@Baylor on 10/11), Baylor (@WVU on 10/18), and tOSU (vs VaTech on 9/6) had all already lost. For each week I'll list the ranking of the four eventual CFP participants (#1 Bama, #2 Oregon, #3 FSU, #4 tOSU) along with Baylor and TCU.
Week 10:
- 7-0 FSU was #2
- 7-1 Oregon was #5
- 7-1 Bama was #6
- 5-1 TCU was #7
- 6-1 Baylor was #13
- 6-1 Ohio State was #16
Week 11:
- 8-0 FSU was #2
- 8-1 Oregon was #4 (passed Ole Miss which lost to Auburn)
- 7-1 Bama was #5 (same)
- 7-1 TCU was #6 (same)
- 7-1 Baylor was #12 (passed Zona which lost to UCLA and UGA which lost to Florida, got passed by ASU which beat Utah)
- 7-1 Ohio State was #14 (passed Zona and UGA)
Week 12:
- 9-1 Oregon was #2 (passed FSU and Auburn which lost to aTm)
- 9-0 FSU was #3 (passed by Oregon)
- 8-1 TCU was #4
- 8-1 Bama was #5 (passed Auburn, got passed by TCU)
- 8-1 Baylor was #7 (passed Auburn, MSU, KSU, Ole Miss, and Notre Dame)
- 8-1 Ohio State was #8 (beat #8 MSU and passed them as well as all the teams Baylor passed)
Week 13:
- 9-1 Bama was #1 (beat #1 MissSt and passed them as well as Oregon, FSU, and TCU)
- 9-1 Oregon was #2 (passed MissSt, got passed by Bama)
- 10-0 FSU was #3 (same as Oregon)
- 9-1 TCU was #5 (got passed by Bama)
- 9-1 Ohio State was #6 (passed Baylor and ASU)
- 8-1 Baylor was #7
Week 14:
- 10-1 Bama was #1
- 10-1 Oregon was #2
- 11-0 FSU was #3
- 9-1 TCU was #5
- 10-1 Ohio State was #6
- 9-1 Baylor was #7
Week 15:
- 11-1 Bama was #1
- 11-1 Oregon was #2
- 10-1 TCU was #3 (passed FSU and MissSt which lost to Ole Miss)
- 12-0 FSU was #4 (passed by TCU which beat Texas)
- 11-1 Ohio State was #5 (passed MissSt)
- 10-1 Baylor was #6 (passed MissSt)
Week 16:
- 12-1 Bama was #1 - routed #16 Mizzou in the SECCG
- 12-1 Oregon was #2 - routed #7 Zona in the PACCG
- 13-0 FSU was #3 - barely beat #11 GaTech in the ACCCG, passed TCU
- 12-1 Ohio State was #4 - routed #13 Wisconsin in the B1GCG, passed TCU
- 11-1 Baylor was #5 - beat #9 KSU, passed TCU
- 11-1 TCU was #6 - routed ISU, got passed by FSU, tOSU, and Baylor
The key was week 13 because that was when Ohio State passed Baylor. The committee has said and their rankings have strongly suggested that they do not take assumed conference titles into account. The key here was that when they got to week 16 they added in Baylor's presumed B12 Championship (based on Baylor's H2H win over TCU). That was a crushing blow for TCU because it meant that, in the committee's view, TCU had to be ranked behind Baylor.
I believe, as
@Kris60 indicated above, that once the committee did that the question wasn't TCU, or tOSU, or Baylor but simply tOSU or Baylor. That really hurt the B12 because while TCU's OOC was not good it wasn't horrible. The Frogs did play a pretty good Minnesota team. Baylor's OOC looked like something that Bill Snyder would have scheduled. Baylor's three OOC opponents were a 1-11 SMU team, a 5-6 MAC team and a 6-6 FCS team. That isn't just bad, it is an embarrassment.
Against teams ranked in the committee's final rankings that year:
- Baylor beat #6 TCU by a FG at home
- Ohio State beat #8 MSU by 12 on the road
- Baylor beat #11 KSU by 11 at home
- Ohio State beat #18 Wisconsin by 59 at a neutral site
- Ohio State beat #25 Minnesota by a TD on the road
The final nail in Baylor's coffin was that their loss wasn't much better than Ohio State's. Really, the biggest knock on the Buckeyes that year was that their loss was by two TD's at home at a VaTech team that finished 6-6. Baylor's was by two TD's on the road to a WVU team that finished 7-5. This is the place where TCU would have had a MUCH better argument. Their loss was by a FG on the road to a Baylor team that finished 11-1.
If Baylor had lost another game I think there is a good chance that TCU would have gone ahead of Ohio State. TCU's OOC wasn't as bad as Baylor's and included a win over Minnesota by a much larger margin than tOSU's subsequent win over the Gophers. Still, with the loss to Baylor, the Frogs also only had two wins over teams ranked in the final CFP poll (#11 KSU by 21 and #25 MN by 23). Additionally, just like Baylor, both of those wins were at home while none of Ohio State's three wins over ranked teams came at home (two road, one neutral).
A B12CG would have substantially changed all of this. If the current structure had been in place then, TCU and Baylor would have played each other in the B12CG. The other CG losers only dropped 0-5 spots in the rankings:
- #7 Arizona got smoked 51-13 by Oregon and dropped to #10.
- #11 GaTech lost 37-35 to FSU and dropped to #12.
- #13 Wisconsin got smoked 59-0 by Ohio State and dropped to #18.
- #16 Mizzou got smoked 42-13 by Bama and didn't drop at all.
Given those results, it seems fair to assume that the hypothetical TCU/Baylor loser would have dropped to around 6-11. That would have given the winner a third win over a ranked team to match Ohio State's three wins over ranked teams.
