to win their conference and didn't. If you can't win your own conference, then some other team who did win their conference should be given the nod.

Personally, I think that in a landscape where only 4 teams get a chance to play for the championship you should never have a team who couldn't win their conference win the national championship. Why wouldn't you use the conference championship as a quasi first round of the playoffs? It feels like we had a wild card team lose their first game of playoffs but be given a chance to play in the division championship game simply because we believe they are a good team (or perhaps in reality, they simply being the most eyeballs/money to the game).

Give me an 8/12/16 game playoff and I have no problem with a wildcard team winning it all.