As I understand it, the thinking is that the Pac-12 needs to do what it can to get a team into the college football playoff.
Consider 2012. Stanford was first in the Pac-12 North with a 10-2 (8-1) record and UCLA was first in the Pac-12 South with a 9-3 (6-3) mark. Stanford got only a slight bump (8th to 6th) in the BCS rankings from winning the conference championship game against a slightly-better-than-mediocre opponent.
In the new system, the 2012 conference championship game would have been a rematch with Oregon, which was 11-1 (8-1). Back then we only had a two-team BCS championship game, so if Oregon had won they might have squeezed into that game--Oregon finished the regular season ranked 4th.
I think that for most years the Pac-12 championship game does feature the two teams with the best conference records. But, as I noted above with 2012, there are a few exceptions.
Consider 2012. Stanford was first in the Pac-12 North with a 10-2 (8-1) record and UCLA was first in the Pac-12 South with a 9-3 (6-3) mark. Stanford got only a slight bump (8th to 6th) in the BCS rankings from winning the conference championship game against a slightly-better-than-mediocre opponent.
In the new system, the 2012 conference championship game would have been a rematch with Oregon, which was 11-1 (8-1). Back then we only had a two-team BCS championship game, so if Oregon had won they might have squeezed into that game--Oregon finished the regular season ranked 4th.
I think that for most years the Pac-12 championship game does feature the two teams with the best conference records. But, as I noted above with 2012, there are a few exceptions.
If there's one thing people have learned in Berkeley, it's that you can't put "Cal football" and "Rose Bowl" in the same sentence. The words just don't fit. You'd be better off linking "covered wagons" with "Mars travel." (Bruce Jenkins, Cal '70, SF Chronicle, Nov. 11, 2017)