There are many things I do not like about suggested expansions of the football playoff to 8 teams, but giving automatic bids to the "Power 5" conference champions is maybe the worst. It would have to be conditional or conference teams could effectively treat non-conference games as exhibitions, as scrimmages, as opportunities to rest players.... Would it not be better to award an automatic bid to an undefeated or 1-loss P5 conference champion and in the event a P5 conference champion has 2 or more losses that conference's wouldbe automatic bid would transfer to the at-large pool?
The idea of the original BCS game, as I understand it, was to establish a consensus "National Champion" by having the two teams with the most legitimate claims to being the best "decide it on the field," which itself is nothing but an ideological construct in a sport with 100+ teams each playing only a dozen games. But two wasn't enough, so it was thought, because more than two teams could make a legitimate claim. So now we have four and already it seems dubious that all four can legitimately claim based on their seasons that they are the best team and the rationale that justified the BCS game and the playoff is being lost. With eight it will be lost and we are facing the NCAA basketball situation where the tournament is not about establishing which is the best team in the nation -- other than tautologically identifying the winner of the tournament as such -- because inevitably a team which clearly is not the best will win as in the basketball tournament and in professional playoffs. We often hear of teams in college basketball (e.g., Michigan State) and professional sports that use the regular season to prepare for the tournament/playoff. Unconditional automatic bids will facilitate this in college football and further diminish the regular season and finally dispense with the questionable rationale that started this whole thing with the BCS.