Even conference champs will produce debate to fill the need for air space, since someone will want to claim either different strengths for different conferences or point to a conference champ that has a worse record then a second place team. Even if you went a full 365 day schedule to accommodate a full Round-Robin, that's just an invitation to say that a team finished stronger and really should have been. So just pick with something reasonable and accept that is the game we are all playing.