The team you were thinking of was Auburn, and at the end of the regular season there were three undefeated teams. USC, Oklahoma amd Auburn . Auburn bithced and whined about not being in the championship game, The reason they were not involoved and the other two teams were is that they had a couple of games against division 1-aa teams, whereas USC and Olahoma beat !-a teams.
Oh by the way Oklahoma has two losses one to Texas and one to Oregon, Stoops did his best coaching job this year.
As to the polls, that is because teams that are on the East coast finsh their games earlier than teams on the West Coast, this has always been a problem, if USC plays a 7:00 game at the Collisseum it has a starting time of 10:00 for someone back East. Very few voters actually see the outcome of west coast games and turn in their ballots on guesstimates.
This is aflaw with Newspaper polls, they do have a print time and late night West Coast games are not on their deadline.
The same thing is happening now, Michigan has two teams that were not in their class. Central Michgan and Ball State, and the Big 10 outside of OSU and Michigan is not very good. Including an 11-1 Wisconsin. check their strength of schedule it comes in at something like 83 out of 106 division one teams.