Sports as a whole are a sliding scale of competition (finding out who's best - ie...for the players/coaches/etc) vs entertainment (for the fans buying a ticket). Yes, the entertainment matters, as otherwise, football games with no one watching don't have rankings and playoffs and billions of dollars.
But without the competition aspect, it doesn't work, either. It's only entertaining because of the competition (although some people might like football because of the pretty colors or tight pants). Akin to Herm Edwards' "YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME" - the fans watch to "SEE WHO WINS THE GAME" and how.
As a sliding scale, it can move up and down - towards and away from either end (competition/entertainment), but it may not get too close to either end. At the expense of either end, the game loses meaning. If it's all about competition, you sort of get what baseball was this year (HR derby disguised as the game of baseball) and it's not as fun to watch. If it's all about entertainment, (like college basketball), it doesn't really matter who ends up winning...which saps the motivation of the competitors themselves.
I'm simply wary of the scale tipping too far towards the entertainment side of things. It's not about "SEC vs the world" or anything like that. I just want the best team to be deemed the champion as often as possible - with the best team being the best combination of roster and results. This does NOT include rewarding them fully for winning this set of games (conf) and ignoring losing this other set of games (OOC).