I wonder if time goes on people are going to come to realize that crowning a national champion comes with costs/drawbacks that they no longer want to pay. For better or for worse, everybody was OK with various polls picking a national champion until the 1990s, and I think it wasn't until the 1960s or 1970s that the final polls came out after the bowls (and there were no conference title games, meaning that just the regular season mattered). There was no mechanism to match up #1 vs. #2 in a bowl game until 1998. It was more important to win your rivalry games and win your conference. There was even a term coined for the concept:
Mythical national championship - Wikipedia
If winning rivalry games and your conference is the primary goal of a season, and not being crowned the #1 team in the country, then you're totally OK with an unbalanced schedule relative to some of your competitors, or scheduling a tough non-conference game that other teams in your conference don't have to play. If winning a national title is the primary goal, those can be drawbacks, especially in a 12 or 16-team playoff system. I like the CFP personally, but it isn't like there are any costs associated with it. If rivalry games continue to get blown up and conference titles diminish in importance, ultimately it is the fans who demanded a system that did those things whether they realized it or not.