This has never been the goal. The only time every bowl ever mattered was when there wer only 6 or 7 of them and they had conference affiliations that pitted the #1 team versus #8 so everyone was forced to guess at the end as to who was the best.

Ever since the bowls expanded to the 40 something they have now, the goal of bowl games has been to produce ad revenue for ESPN and the schools. Period. Those game don't matter and never will matter because they're branding exercises and glorified scrimmages.

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Every out of conference game

These already matter, fairly heavily actually. Oklahoma beating Ohio State was the entire reason they were allowed to gloss over a homes loss to Iowa State. Clemson beating Auburn and South Carolina was the whole reason the Syracuse loss was more or less wiped from the record books so far as the media seemed concerned. Then there was UGA beating Notre Dame which was almost single handedly the reason we were ranked #1 for the time that we were.

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Real tangible value to playoff standing and how difficult your draw will be if you're good enough to make it.

There will never not be controversy over the last slot in any playoff. 4 teams, 8 teams, 12 teams. That last slot is going to be bickered over every single year when you have 120+ other teams trying to get in.

If you're trying to avoid controversy with an expanded playoff then you're running a fool's errand.