That was the 2019 preseason ranking, not the final one. That's actually pretty damn good. Clemson got in. It thought both the SEC East and the SEC West winners would have a good shot at getting in, and that the two teams fighting for the SEC West title (Bama and LSU) were nearly as good as each other. Once the SEC stuff is settled, it has the next playoff team as the Big Ten champ, and if an available spot, the Big 12 champ. It got the Big 12 champ right. Its only real misses were Notre Dame, and picking Michigan to win the Big Ten. But pretty much everyone thought Michigan would win the Big Ten, mainly because there were too many unknowns surrounding Ohio State going into the season.

Of course, the final 2019 ranking still had LSU at #3, behind Ohio State and Clemson. But what apparently no one here understands is that FPI is all about your remaining schedule. So going into the playoff, Ohio State and Clemson were considerably ahead of LSU in FPI, which made sense considering they had a harder schedule going forward. Clemson was guaranteed to play the number 1 team in FPI (Ohio State), and Ohio State was guaranteed to play the number two team in FPI (Clemson). LSU, on the other hand, was guaranteed to play the number nine team in FPI (Oklahoma). It was too big of a gap for LSU to make up going into it. That's obviously an issue with FPI that they should fix. So basically, FPI is pretty good until you get to the playoff.