re: I miss poll era football.

Personally I'm all about deciding the championship on the field, so obviously the CFP system we have today is a huge improvement, & much fairer than what existed before. But one notable thing about the poll era prior to the BCS format was that the national championship was always purely notional, unofficial - "mythical" was the word often appended to it. Thus, any team that finished a season with the best record in the country (against a reasonably big-time schedule) could plausibly claim a national title, & many years multiple teams did. If I remember correctly, there was never any official, recognized-by-the-NCAA football champion until the BCS was initiated.