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Clemson and Alabama each lost one game. Clemson to 4-8 Syracuse and Bama to 10-3 Auburn. Therefore Clemson deserves their number one ranking and Bama got in on name recognition

if you're going by who ya beat, then yeah. Clemson beat 3 teams in the top 15 in September alone, won their conference title with a 38-3 drubbing of a top 10 team. Clemson also beat the team that beat you. so yeah, I'd say Clemson deserved the #1 spot.

Dabo pulls this one out, and I think there might be a new pecking order in top coaches in the country. not greatest of all time talk, but current top coach would be Dabo in my opinion.

"best coaches" is never quantifiable immediately. too many moving parts. but yes, dabo is already strongly in the discussion for top current coach, imo. regardless of cfp outcome.

if OSU in 2015 didn't get in, hard for me to see why 2017 Alabama should've gotten in.

that OSU 2015 team was freaking loaded. Who is the best RB in the NFL? Zeke Elliot. Who is one of the top 5 DE's and maybe the best pass rusher in the NFL? Joey Bosa. They were experienced vets on that team.

but who was that 15 osu going against? certainly not a 2 loss (1 blowout to unranked team) conf champ team. can't compare teams from different years without also considering the circumstances. if the '15 osu team was going vs this years bama, no brainer osu gets in.

if this years osu team has 1 loss, or even not blowout loss, they're in.

Georgia for example with a 9 game conference slate would have either to drop Georgia Tech or not play another P5 school that year (they usually play Tech and one more) OR play 11 P5 schools, which is unlikely (though they did it one year).

USCe and UK and UF are in the same boat.

I like this idea as well. 9-conference game schedules should be mandated. Big 12 has 10 teams and they play a round robin so they are fine. B1G and Pac both went to 9 conference game schedules. ACC and SEC are still holding out. Gee, I wonder why.
I like the idea of going to 6 team play-off, with the 5 conference champs getting auto-bids. That last spot will be a wild-card. Take the top two teams that finished just outside and make them play each other for that 6th spot in the playoff. You get rewarded for winning your conference with a spot in the playoff and a first round bye. Winning your conference should matter. Right now the CFP is saying it doesn't. If you were the next two highest rated teams but were "oh so close" you get a chance to play your way in. I don't see why anybody should have a problem with that.

fwiw, sec has mandate to play 9 p5 schools. i think it's worded different, something like must play 1 p5 ooc, but with the conf slate makes 9 so no difference. EDIT: i misread the first part, thought it said 9 p5 games not 9 conf games. fwiw, i agree sec should do 9 conf games.
also, there is no way in hell bama or anyone could have forseen fsu droping like they did. that was thought of before season to be one of, if not THE best opening games in CFB HISTORY. you can't go back in hindsight and say the scheduling was weak intentionally. that's reaching at best.
i don't like the idea of conf champs getting auto bids cause we will end up with a 3-4 loss team eventually, especially if we're including all p5 confs.

People seem ok with a 7 loss super bowl champ. There should be a defined way in, not arbitrary selection.

i wasn't. that was a ridiculous year, imo. 
but it also wasn't including a 7 loss team in over a 1 loss team just because of a division championship.
if we go to 8 teams, then i don't have a problem with p5 champs auto bids. but i don't really think we need 8 team playoff either. (though i think we're heading that way and fast)

USC did it this year.  The only non P5 school they played was in the NY6 last year.

Texas has played 11 P5 schools every year since 2012 (I'm counting Notre Dame and BYU as P5 schools here).
Of course, Texas has also suffered severely from playing a more challenging schedule.  Losses to Maryland and USC this year, would have been wins against a school like Mercer.    But I'd rather see my team play the more interesting schedule, to be honest.

That 2015 buckeye team lost a game on a last-second play in a rainstorm but followed that up with an impressive Road victory by kicking the hell out of a 10 win Michigan team.
 They did not get beat by their arrival soundly and have that be the last game they played - like Bama.
 So if Wisconsin was above Bama before this weekend and so was Auburn, and according to Hocutt separation between number five and number eight was minimal, what happened over the weekend to make  Alabama "unequivocally better" than Ohio State?    Was it the team that beat Bama getting blasted? Was it Wisconsin getting beat by Ohio State?    What suddenly made Alabama on equivocally better than Ohio State?  

i don't know what changed and agree with what you're saying. i said after those rankings were released i thought it'd be osu based on the 'minimal separation' from 5-8 from the committee spokesman, bringing sos/conf champs/etc into play, which osu would be in better position than bama is. and i don't know what changed (more likely they were bs-ing for ratings, imo).
as for the '15 osu vs '17 bama, again the competition to get in the cfp in '15 was much greater than in '17. if '15 osu replaced '17 osu, it's a no brainer and osu is in easily. you can't just compare 15 osu to 17 bama. you have to compare the entire circumstances, which aren't the same 15 osu had much better teams to compete with to get in cfp than the 17 counterparts.