First, the payouts have their origin in longtime bowl relationships not any new attempt to treat the ACC like a black sheep. This point has been explained to you ad nauseam yet you continue to persist. It is also a known part of the entire rotating bowl structure that you claim to understand. Your final conclusion is correct, you do not know what being treated like a black sheep is if you are relying on that as your main point. Second, selection committees, football, basketball, whatever always generate differences of opinion as to who was done favors. Fact is the ACC has had at least one participant in the playoff every year, unlike some other conferences and exclusion could qualify as a definition of being treated like a black sheep well before seeding. Disagreeing with seeding, particularly when the committee has obvious links to all conferences is a real stretch at best. Finally, I recall the situations you bring up in number 3, however, if you actually go back and look at the circumstances of each individual situation you will find other factors(not just to treat the ACC like a black sheep) that generated those decisions. This last scenario is pretty much akin to your repeated attempts to deflect any explanations for why things happened with regard to the ACC as speculation or excuses while ignoring the actual realities of the conference landscapes that existed at the time decisions were made.