FIFY - and it's a lot of why that old system was a sick joke.
Agree, but the cfp in its current format is not much less of a joke. Taking "deserving" teams over best teams (ND last year, Michigan State a few years ago) and ranking the teams based on God knows what criteria in lieu of who is really the best team (Clemson #1 seed in 2017 was a joke) has not helped cfp. The cfp committee consist of biased school ADs, and non-football people such as school presidents and even politicians. It's simply not picking and seeding based on who are the best teams. Politics and brand name are still a huge factor (which does benefit Bama, so there's that).
In my opinion, with only 4 teams there is not enough wiggle room to adequately factor in strength of schedule along with performance & record. Clemson has little to no incentive to toughen their schedule. This year their schedule is hardly any tougher than UCFs, but if both teams run the table Clemson will be #1 seed in cfp and UCF will finish around 8th and get another consolation bowl. I'm not making the UCF argument here, just showing that Clemson schedule is a joke, and under current cfp system Clemson would be absolutely nuts to change that any time soon. If anything, they might be wise to weaken it since now that they are among the elite all they have to do is win out to make cfp, schedule be damned. The best/most obvious solution is to expand to 8-teams. For those who think this is a mistake, the only other solution I can come up with is to heavily weight strength of schedule in selection process and seeding process, but then you leave a big name like ND out last year and we all know that would not sit well with TV execs (which is why the cfp doesn't especially take the 4 best teams to begin with).
Bottom line, fans looking for a way to get Clemson to toughen their schedule are out of luck because there isn't one outside of revamping cfp - right now the cfp literally incentivizes them to play a soft schedule. If there are better ways to address this I'm all ears as I'm certainly not an expert, just a fan.