The talent gap in college football among the very top teams and everyone else is WIDE. That used to be balanced by the fact that if one of those teams had their C game at the wrong time, they'd be done. You had 11 regular season games, and a bowl game. You lost 1, that might be it.
A less talented team could get to the top, by playing their A games in the games they had to play their A games. And the little bit of randomness might reward them
Now you have so many additional chances, the last 3 of which (CCG, CFP semi, CFP final) are so high stakes that it seems unlikely a team plays well below their capabilities, that all the CFP has done is removed the randomness of losing a road game at #17 NC State impacting anything.
This, exactly this.
The modern system has dramatically reduced the stakes of those ho-hum, week-in and week-out top-4 vs #17 type games.
Back in the pre-BCS era and to a somewhat lesser extent when tOSU had a potential NC team, every week was high-stakes because a random mid-season loss to MSU (see 1998) could completely derail a NC. Now even a loss to Michigan in a top-4 matchup can still leave my team with a chance (see 2022).
I always said that a big part of the "luck" involved in winning an NC in the old days was having your "off week" against a team bad enough that you could get away with it.
Example:
In 1968 Ohio State went 10-0 and won the NC but, surprisingly, they only beat Illinois by a TD and they had an even closer escape against Michigan State. Illinois and Michigan State finished 1-9 and 5-5 respectively. If Ohio State had played that poorly against SMU, PU, or M (finished 8-3, 8-2, and 8-2 respectively) they'd have lost and Penn State would have won the NC.
This past season Georgia had an off game against Mizzou and barely pulled out a win but it really didn't matter. If they had lost the only difference would have been that they'd have been the #2 seed (behind Michigan) but it wouldn't have even changed the match-ups because if Michigan and Georgia would have been 1/2, the Committee would have flipped 3/4 to avoid the tOSU/M rematch so instead of:
- #1 UGA vs #4 tOSU and
- #2 M vs #3 TCU
We instead would have seen:
- #2 UGA vs #3 tOSU and
- #1 M vs #4 TCU