Sure but we haven't had anything like the 2005 season in a long time. We're way past that. I don't view a 3-loss team winning a 12-team playoff as significantly worse than 2-loss LSU winning the championship in 2007.
The issue to me is more about the perceived importance of games when they are played than it is about the actual importance in retrospect.
There was always a chance to win an NC with two losses but everyone knew that it was a remote chance. You used LSU as your example because there is no other example in the modern era. In the 50-odd years since the AP moved their final poll to after the bowls there has been one NC with more than one loss, I'm not aware of any others.
A lot of EXTREMELY good one-loss teams never got the chance to play for it. One loss frequently eliminated a team and two almost always did.
Even in the 4-team CFP era a second loss has always been fatal (at least so far).
Even for you and I, as fans of Helmet teams, we knew that even just one bad afternoon drastically reduced our teams' chances of winning it all and with a second loss we needed miracles.
When we go to twelve I think that you and I will more-or-less be able to assume that our teams have at least two and possibly three mulligans available.
Since the poll moved, these are all the years in which an Ohio State team won all but one of their games and didn't win the NC:
- 69, lost at M as a big favorite
- 70, lost RB to Stanford as a big favorite
- 73, tied at M
- 75, lost to UCLA in RB as a big favorite after having beaten them in October at their place
- 79, lost to USC in RB by one freaking point
- 96, lost to M as a big favorite after clinching RB
- 98, lost to a mediocre (finished 6-6) MSU team
- 06, lost to UF in BCSCG
- 10, lost at UW (would have been subsequently vacated)
- 15, lost to a good but not great MSU team
- 18, lost at Purdue to a bad team (finished >.500)
- 19, lost to Clemson in CFP Semi-final
- 20, lost to Bama in CFPCG
To be fair, the 70, 75, 79, 06, 19, and 20 losses were all in postseason games that were effectively playoff or CG equivalents at least for the Buckeyes but that still leaves seven seasons (69, 73, 96, 98, 10, 15, 18) in the last 54 in which a single regular season loss cost tOSU a NC (or at least a shot at it).
One loss frequently was enough to crush a team's NC dreams. With a 12-team CFP that will only be true in the CFP.
To me, that was a part of what made CFB so intense. Your NC dreams could die on any random Saturday.