I don’t have a real answer for this and am just tossing it out there for your consideration.  

I know it’s far from a perfect system to rank teams—which is why a large part of me feels that maybe a playoff system featuring conference champions might the best choice of imperfect choices.  At least that way teams earn their way in on the field.

But the current system is built around a committee of experts studying lots of film—and five years in a row they have been wrong in identifying the best team (although I suppose their fallback argument might be that there was “little separation” between the top team and #2 and/or the other teams selected).