The bowl streak could end with the expanded playoff because I suspect some of the lesser bowls will fold, so teams that are 6-6 or 7-5 could get left out. I'm old enough to recall when making a bowl was a sign of a decent season. The Gator Bowl was a decent bowl game short of a major NYD bowl. If your team was 8-3, you'd get a bowl if your team had a following of note.
That said, 26 in a row is "Ohio State-ish" over a much shorter span. It simply means no awful seasons, and maybe a couple decent ones.
A problem with a cutoff of X number of losses is simply that it prevents teams fromt "moving on up", but it's good for now I suspect. The simple metric of all time wins is pretty good I think, or all time winning percentage, or whatever, I probably prefer a metric based on all time top ten finishes or being ranked or giving points based on the AP final ranking, etc., if one really needs a ranking of this ilk.
