Win your conference and you get a spot, don’t win your conference and pray for an at large bid. Bottom line, win and your in.
And therein lies the problem. In any given year the third-best (or even fourth-best) SEC team is better than most of the other conference champions. How does a “win and you’re in” playoff system do any justice in that case?
It seems that would be the simple way to do it, but instead they insist on subjecting us to this boring, meaningless Bowl system