As Argo said, conference championships have absolutely nothing to do with the BCS championship game.
In recent years, several news organizations have influenced and tricked voters into believing that if a team doesn't win the conference championship game they can't play in the NC game.
That is false and always has been. In addition to the team, Nebraska, that Argo mentioned, Oklahoma did almost the same thing.
They did manage to win their division of their conference, but lost the conference championship game and still went on to play LSU in the NC game.
Last year, lot's of lying and misinformation was being purposely propagated by ESPN hosts, I suppose they received their marching orders from the higher ups at ESPN.
The charge was on to see how many times analysts and hosts could repeat the lie that Georgia had to win their conference to play in the NC game.
Due to this intentional misrepresentation, a #3 Georgia was jumped by a #7 or lower, might have even been #9, LSU after LSU won the SEC Championship game.
Many of the voters took what ESPN told them as gospel and did exactly what ESPN told them to do, which was to vote LSU into the NC game over Georgia, a much more highly ranked team.
By doing this, many voters violated the trust placed in them to vote for the best team to play in the NC game.
That is what the BCS is all about, matching the two best teams, not necessarily two conference champions. That is why when the BCS was formed, it was made crystal clear that a conference championship was not required to play in the NC game.
