And then say that one should be considered a national champion team because it compares favorably to a year it didn't play in. I'm guessing there are a lot of teams better than BYU's 1984 team that would've won a national championship had they traveled back in time and played in 1984 with their team from the future. And there may have been other years that BYU's 1984 team could travel to and be better than anyone else and win another national championship.
But Utah's 2008 team didn't play in 1984. They played in 2008. So they would need to be better than all of the other teams in 2008 in order to win a national championship. And the voters didn't think they were better than all of the other teams from 2008. Though they were a very very good team.