How does Clemson winning help Tennessee? Clem, USCw, MICH, TCU, and GA need to lose and throw it all into chaos.
Clemson would then be a 2 loss league champion with a less severe loss to USCe, and a loss to media darling ND on the road. Decent chance they would catapult over Bama and UT. The criteria point awarded for being a league champ could be subjectively large to this committee.
TCU is very unlikely to fall below 4 with a loss. The playoffs are about 99 percent coming from 1-5 at this point. It's basically do you want USC or Ohio State playing Georgia in the first round.