Winning a national title is harder now in the era of conference expansion. Power 5 schools play several challenging conference games, perhaps one or two more difficult contests out of conference, a conference championship game plus a two game playoff. The margin for how many you can lose and still win a title is for the majority of schools, only one. In 1990 we had seven conference games. UGA was not exceptionally good that year. We played only eleven regular season games and no conference championship. Also, even though the Power 5 schools dominate, there are plenty of other schools that have stepped up their programs because they are at least part of the highest division and want to compete. Look at the athletes going to USF and UCF and some of the success they have had - in 1990 they were not in the mix at all.
With all of that said winning a title is not impossible. UCF proved you can get mighty close to winning a title without being in a Power 5 conference. But, they may actually have an advantage over a school like us competing with 13 other big time programs in one conference. So, my opinion is winning a title now is hard, yes, much harder than it has been ever before, but impossible, no.
