That’s always going to be true regardless of what y’all’s records are. You could face them 8-3 vs 7-4 and it’s still going to be the big circled calendar date of the year. That’s what makes rivalries special, not championship implications. The championship implications aren’t going to be there every single season.
And that’s not unique to college football, either.
Back in 2009 I coached at Wichita Falls High School. The team was terrible. By the end of the year, they’d gone into the final game 2-7. No playoff spot available to them, no real purpose to the rest of the season, right? Except that last opponent was Wichita Falls Rider; their arch rival…who was also entering the game 2-7 with no shot at the playoffs. There wasn’t an empty seat in that stadium, and it was known to be that way well in advance.
In those games, the records don’t matter. In 1997, Texas and Oklahoma met in the cotton bowl, and neither team had a winning record (Texas was 2-2, OU was 2-3). The stadium was filled to capacity, again as expected. It’s also well understood that a big part of your job as head coach of either school depends on whether or not you can beat that team across the river. If you can’t, you’re not gonna last long.
Again, the argument that expanding the playoff diminishes the regular season relies on inherently fallacious reasoning. I can find no better example of a non sequitur than that. Well maybe I can find a contender…