re: Hypothetically Speaking... Football playoffs

They won't have a choice about the format. I suppose what you're asking is, if the SEC teams are 1 and 2, whether the committee will blatantly drop the 2nd ranked team to the 4th seed. My guess is that will depend on how obvious it is. If there had been a playoff format in 2011, then dropping Bama to the 4th seed would have been extremely blatant, and the committee might have been wary of doing so simply because it would have looked manipulative. But in other years, numbers 2-4 are generally closer in perceived quality and dropping the 2nd ranked team to 4th seed might not cause as much of a stir, which means the committee will be less circumspect about doing so.