Is the College Football Playoff what it's all about?

When the moment occurred, Rick Neuheisel lost his composure. UCLA's backup quarterback – his son Jerry – threw what would become the winning touchdown pass against Texas. And a father's emotion, captured in a click by someone in the room at the Pac-12 Network, was pure joy.

"It was unadulterated," Neuheisel says of the moment. "It was, 'pinch me, this is happening.' "

And it gave the coach-turned-analyst a new perspective: "Those moments happen every Saturday for somebody's kid."

They happen every Saturday for somebody's team, too. Even removing the father-son angle, those moments are part of what makes college football magical. But this season, something else has entered the equation — and it's worth pondering whether an altered perspective might cause us to lose sight of the magic.

Even as Neuheisel was celebrating the victory, and especially his son's role, he understood almost everyone else was thinking something else — because he'd been contemplating the same things about other games:

It's only September, but we're all talking about playoffs.

"It's kind of sad," says Neuheisel, who has taken part of the discussion in his role with the Pac-12 Network. "We've now created everything where I look at Georgia, and in Week One I say they're a 'final four' team. Week Two, they're out. Neither one of those premises are true. There's still so much to be played."

And inevitably, so much more to be said.

There's no good way to measure, but the volume of the conversation surrounding college football seems to have been cranked up. More than that, though, it's been funneled in one direction.

The context for almost everything — now, and maybe forever more — is the College Football Playoff.

The selection committee won't even meet for another six weeks. But if the official deliberation hasn't begun, the unofficial discussion is already incessant.

"It's clear people are discussing the regular season in a different way this year," Playoff executive director Bill Hancock says. "There's no question there's a different buzz in the first three weeks (rather) than in the past, because of the playoff. And it's cool."

Is it? Used to be, a game was a game. You won. You lost. There were those moments. And then there was next Saturday. But suddenly, it seems, September is all about December. Style points are awarded. Data points are recorded.

And the debate — who's in at the moment, who's out — is endless.

While Neuheisel was still high-fiving his TV colleagues, and then calling to congratulate his son, most of us were already thinking a long way down the road: What did Brett Hundley's injury mean to UCLA's playoff hopes? How would the closer-than-expected win factor in?

Whether it's the Bruins or the Bulldogs or anyone else, Hancock is correct when he cautions that it's too soon to draw conclusions. But he also knows it's always been a part of the process. Conclusions get jumped. Opinions swing radically from one weekend to the next. The debate over which teams should play for the national championship is nothing new.

What seems different — or at least, greatly intensified — is how early the debate has begun, and how far it permeates. Virtually everything, it seems, is already being sifted for its possible postseason meaning.

"Some of it is that people are so excited about the playoff, they're enjoying speculating in Week Three," Hancock says. "That fun is a part of college football."

But others wonder if it's too much, too soon — and too different.

"I'm a little concerned that we're talking too much about it, and not enjoying the games enough," former Texas coach Mack Brown says.

Urged by his new bosses at ESPN, Brown provides his top four teams on a regular basis, so he knows that he's part of the problem — if it's a problem. But so is almost everyone else. Whether it's ESPN debating seeds or Paste BN Sports conducting a mock selection or a fan arguing with his buddies in a sports bar, it's hard to separate whether the playoff conversation is being driven by media entities or if the advent of the playoff is driving the conversation.

Probably it's both. What's certain is that it's happening sooner, and that it's louder, than ever before. And it might be going deeper than the obvious matchups.

No one is surprised that Oklahoma's 34-10 victory against Tennessee would instantly become more important than the actual result: a win for the Sooners, a loss for the Vols. Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops' comments the last couple of years about the SEC made that inevitable. But the Sooners' performance will also be compared to the SEC's playoff contenders when those teams play Tennessee, which means the big win might carry big meaning.

But so might another game, and it's not one you'd expect. Minnesota at TCU last weekend was not a marquee matchup; neither team is expected to be a part of the playoff picture. But even a matchup between teams that could conceivably meet in a pre-Christmas bowl becomes a potential referendum on whether the Big Ten or Big 12 is stronger, an exhibit in an ongoing debate over which league champ should get a playoff berth.

"You're playing for your conference, and you're playing for a seat at the table," Neuheisel says. "And it's a crowded table."

Or at least, so goes the continuing conversation. We don't really know what, if anything, TCU's lopsided win will mean to the selection committee. We don't really know much about how the selection committee will think about anything. As Brown notes, the selection committee probably doesn't know how and what it will think, either.

"The unknown has created a tremendous amount of conversation," Brown says. "Next year we might have some answers."

But would that reduce the intensity of the debate, or just further refine it? Neuheisel wonders if an eight-team playoff — something he sees as inevitable and essential — would help lower the volume. Champions of the Power Five conferences would probably get automatic berths, thus potentially assuaging some of the politicking that has already begun.

The Bowl Championship Series already altered how the regular season is viewed. Beginning each season in late October, the BCS race had become the overarching narrative, increasingly focused on computer rankings and polls and style points. But what's happening this season seems deeper, perhaps a fundamental shift that arrived with the new postseason format.

Even as they know it probably won't ever be dialed back, Brown and Neuheisel hope to find a way to savor the sport's inherent beauty, free of larger implications.

"I don't want us to focus so much on the end that we don't enjoy the journey," Brown says, "and I'm feeling that a little bit right now."

There was another moment, earlier in UCLA's game against Texas, that Neuheisel loved. After Hundley was injured, his father went to the locker room to check on him. When he returned to the stands, Brett Hundley Sr. helped lead UCLA fans in a chant: "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!"

"That's college football," Rick Neuheisel said. "We can't get so caught up in who's at the table that we lose sight that these are just magical, magical Saturdays."