Ohio State and Florida State got into the win column. Texas and Alabama did not. The first big weekend of major college football is in the books, and now, players and athletic departments can settle into a new, once-unthinkable era in which schools pay athletes and a team's ultimate goal isn't a bowl game, but the playoff.

Nobody should get too comfortable.

In just seven years, the main funding source of all this change — a menu of media deals highlighted by ESPN’s $7.8 billion contract to televise the College Football Playoff — will either be renegotiated or blown up amid even more change. Whatever happens, another round of jockeying will almost certainly include a massive influx of even more cash.

What could stem from that is any or all of the following: the introduction of p

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