I think you need to look at it differently. The SEC and B12 had conference championship games going back to the 90's, but of the other P5 conferences, the ACC started in 2005, PAC-12 in 2011, and B1G in 2011.
Then you can throw out UConn and WVU, because both were in the Big East which not only isn't a conference anymore, but also didn't have a CCG.
So 2000, 2002, and 2004 don't count as significantly. 2005, 2008 and 2011, the ACC had a weak champ get in who had won their CCG. 2012 was a weird year with both OSU and PSU ineligible, so you can sorta throw that out. Then you had 5 straight years before this year's Washington team.
Conference championship games GREATLY reduce the odds that an undeserving team will make it in.
that's a whole lot of spinning to discount all those years to where it doesn't matter.
imo it will greatly increase the likelihood.
in a round robin or best conf record wins, it's much less likely that a conf puts up a bad candidate cause those with bad record will already be eliminated. unless the whole conf is crap.
but in a title game scenario, it becomes a 1 game play-in season. all you have to do is be lucky on your side of the bracket.
in sec, last 8 years there's been 2 3-loss teams (pre-seccg) in it.
in the 8 years of b1gcg, there's been 1 4-loss and 1 5-loss teams in, and the 5 loss team
won it.
in the acc last 8 years, they've had 1 3-loss team, 1 5-loss team, and 1 6-loss team.
in the pac it's only a handful of years that they
don't have a 3+ loss team involved. and had multiple 4 and a 6 loss team involved. this year BOTH were 3 loss teams.
it's a minor miracle that none of those upsets happened in the last 5 years.
if we're going to do auto bids for conf champs, it has to be with the caveat that they're in top 10-12. and if a crazy season with ridiculous parity results in a 3-4 loss team being top 10, then so be it. it hasn't happened in the history of the game, but if it does, fine. but i have 0 problem leaving out any conf champ that's got 3-4-5 losses in favor of a non-conf champ with 1.