But I emphatically disagree that NCAA Basketball has a less meaningful regular season than either the NBA, MLB, or NHL.
Bubble teams suck. They're sub-.500 in their conference, all competing to get curb-stomped in the first round of the tournament. And it's after-the-fact.
Name 3 big regular-season college basketball games from the past decade. I'll wait.
The NBA and NHL are such absurd outliers, they are their own group of crazy. Allowing 50% or more of your teams into the postseason destroys the competition vs entertainment sliding scale to pieces. It's solely entertainment.
MLB had it right, but then has slid further to the entertainment end with the wild-card junk. Obviously, I'm pro-competition vs entertainment, but whatever. That's not important.
College football had a system that was poor at identifying the one, best team (best meaning best resume...meaning best record, because it was a simpler time). The playoff has been installed to better help find that best team. It allows for matchups to happen that couldn't have in the past, and that's a good thing, IF you're interested in identifying the one, best team.
For those of us pining for the good ole days, then entertainment might be a little more important than competition.
My proposal, to go back to how it used to be AND having an AS-NEEDED +1 championship game tries to value entertainment and competition equally.