We meet on the last Saturday in November, which for me has always been the best time of the college football season.

As exciting as the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. As blissful as MLB Opening Day. As essential as the Sundays of all the golf majors combined.

In college football, Rivalry Week – all those fabled, magical matchups in the enchanted afterglow of Thanksgiving – is everything.

I’m sorry, but that’s all.

The all-consuming College Football Playoff has rendered Rivalry Week ineffective, at least compared to before.

In my 2017 book Football Bucket List, there was a chapter on all of the biggest college rivalries, most of whose annual games were reserved for the last Saturday in November. By the way, I should really pause here to thank all 14 of you who bought and read this thing. But the book – and this chapter in particular – was, it turns out, written by an absolute idiot.

Consider this passage about rivalries that might as well have been written 25 or 50 years earlier: “They do not go together like oil and water, but rather like leaking gas and an open flame.” Football’s greatest rivalries explode with emotion and physical play on the field and opponent loyalty off the field. Yet they also fit together like pieces of a beautiful puzzle; no side is truly a whole without the other.”

It’s like this was written in another life, and if you think about it, it was. The book was cobbled together in the summer and fall of 2016, as the Cubs worked toward winning a World Series for the first time since then. But the playoffs already existed, albeit in the four-team model that lasted until last season. And I thought even then that the four-team playoffs sucked too much oxygen out of the proverbial room and minimized rivalry games, all non-playoff bowl games and various other traditions. Nevertheless, Rivalry Week retained its unique appeal as the highlight of the season, at least from my perspective.

But now that the playoffs have expanded to 12 teams? Either you are included or you are irrelevant. Either your next game will have an impact on the list of 12, or why bother at all? And even a so-called rivalry game that actually affects who the playoff committee picks and who it doesn’t really count, just in terms of the playoffs themselves; The rivalry part has been reduced to a bonus feature at best.

College football relied on so many things that made it unique, most notably the fact that the regular season was more important than the postseason. While other sports and leagues focused on determining a champion, college football had its own day of the week and its own sense of pageantry during the regular season. That’s a thing of the past, underscored by the recent six-year, $7.8 billion agreement between the CFP and ESPN, whose exclusive rights to televise playoff games completely dominate coverage from August through January.

On Friday, Minnesota and Wisconsin will renew the most played rivalry in college football’s top division, the FBS. This will be game #134, with Wisconsin holding the smallest lead in the series at 63-62-8. The winning team will run from goal post to goal post with Paul Bunyan’s axe, mimicking knocking it down. It will be quaint. The sports world doesn’t care.

Also on this date, Mississippi State and Ole Miss – historically a hateful rivalry – will face off in the annual Egg Bowl, and Georgia Tech and Georgia will play the game actually nicknamed “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate.” Ole Miss fell out of playoff contention last week, reducing interest in this game only to locals and punters (who would bet on a contest between a fire hydrant and a tuna casserole).

Saturday was supposed to be the college football day of the year. The Iron Bowl (Alabama and Auburn), the Palmetto Bowl (Clemson and South Carolina), the Territorial Cup (Arizona and Arizona State). Of course, the blessed battle for the Jeweled Shillelagh (Notre Dame and USC). By God, the best rivalry of all as I see it – The Game (Michigan and Ohio State).

Yes, yes, the “hat” game too. We also let Illinois and Northwestern play.

But Saturdays are now only for the playoffs. That’s every Saturday of the season, including this one.

Maybe you like it that way? The expansion of the playoffs was broadly popular. It could be that I’m not just an idiot, but a dinosaur.