The standard still stands based on the rules the committee has established for itself. Conference championships do matter and as long as ND doesn't have one, we are at a disadvantage. If all things are relatively equal, ND will still lose out to conference champs. Things weren't equal this year in re: the two conference champs that got left out.
First of all, ND was 12-0 which neither of the other 2 left out conference winners are.
It would be tough to argue that ND wasn't better than conference champ OSU given the 29 point loss to a 6-6 team and a one point win over a 5-7 team with an interim head coach. And OSU didn't really get any extra cred by easing past a 8-4 team which ND beat at NW. Had OSU played a better team in the title game, it might have been a different story.
One would have to be an idiot to try to argue that ND wasn't better than 10-3 Washington which lost to a 7-5 team and eased past Stanford by 4 at home, a team that ND handily beat by 21.
Georgia, Michigan and UCF get no extra oomph that the conference champions get so 12-0 trumps the two loss teams and a team that might be pretty good but didn't play or beat anyone of consequence
In all honesty, ND vs Oklahoma might be a coin flip but the 'unequivocally' better standard doesn't really come into play since both teams are in. I suspect the committee decided an Oklahoma semi would be good for the ratings and didn't want to get work up over a somewhat pointless discussion for them.
The most important thing the committee said was the whole year counted. It takes away those morons who would argue that early seasons games don't matter.... that, for example, Michigan was a better team at the end of the year and would beat ND if they played them again and got pretty much destroyed because they lost focus on what mattered.