Initially it was because I wanted BYU to go AAC and people kept saying that doing so would be a huge drop in exposure and ratings (even though the AAC has a contract with ESPN also).
So I started by looking at BYU, Houston, Cincy, Memphis, UCF. And for that it was important to include championship games and bowl games because those are opportunities that would be available to BYU if they were in a conference.
(Yes, they can get bowl games now, but the quality of bowl games available would be MUCH better in a conference)