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Moving to 14 teams definitely created a situation where the number of quality conference games on the schedule could be a lot lower. But the week-in, week-out hammering in the SEC means that every game had a measure of quality.
This partially offsets the eight-game conference schedule, which means seven less total losses for the SEC than the Big 12, Big Ten and Pac 12. Mississippi is a top-ten team with two losses that did some damage in-conference aside from a weak effort against Alabama, but played Louisville (6-6), Tulane (2-10), Liberty (7-5) and Austin Peay (6-5, FCS) out of conference.
I don't like conference championship games (I might like them better next week, but that would be temporary regardless). They've enabled these 14-team monstrosities - and now the SEC is essentially breaking apart with the 16-team format, which will likely mean four-team pods just to ensure that Alabama, for example, plays Georgia at least one each generation (a slight exaggeration) as long as they go to nine conference games.
When the WAC tried 16, they went to pods, and that collapsed under similar complaints. The eight strongest schools went on to form the Mountain West.
The Bowl model only worked pre-internet. Now, everything's national. With basketball, you can have conference tournaments and March Madness and it feels enhanced. But the nature of football can't support a 64-team (or 68) tournament and expanding conferences means rivalry games don't get played every year and new rivalries rarely develop.
I'd like to see a new college football structure develop, though it's hard to preserve that added rivalry/conference meaning and ensure that each good team has a somewhat equal chance of participating in a playoff.
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