I think Scott had a year like that last year. I think caveats like "pre-COVID" are going to be a regular feature this year.
Article on PFF says there are 4 teams whose chances at the CFP were hurt by the return of the Big 10 to play. Treash: Four teams that saw their College Football Playoff chances shrink with the Big Ten returning to play | College Football | PFF ND, Georgia, UCF and Florida. Mostly they say that ND, Georgia and Fla don't have much of a chance at winning their conference championship which with the addition of the Big 10 back into the mix they feel not winning the Conf Championship will make them no go for the CFP. Probably right, esp with 4 slots, and only 4 Power 5 conferences playing. It'll be pretty easy to just give each conference champion a slot, assuming that the conf champion is likely to be an either 0 or 1 loss team. For UCF it gets back to them just not being in a Power 5 conference. They didn't mention the Cincinnati Bearcats who might be as good as UCF, who looked really good beating Ga.Tech. Also inaddition to the PAC 12 voting later this week on returning to football, the Mountain West is now considering returning to football this fall.
We are dealing with a brand new challenge this season. No one really knows what is going to transpire!
One thing that could be a factor is number of games played, or data points. If somehow we have teams like OU/Texas/Fla/UGA and ND at say 9-1 and Big 10 Champion is say 7-1 because they didn't play one of the games due to covid. Does that matter, does being Big 10 Champion at 7-1 top SEC runner up at 9-1?