With so much speculation — and uncertainty for BYU and Utah and others — about the exact form college football will take in the years ahead, it’s worth considering a couple of possibilities and, at the end of it, making a declarative statement about what would be best and worst for the Utes and Cougars, and for the endeavor as a whole.

The first option, as unlikely as it would be, is for the four power leagues to stay pretty much as they are. There might be some comfort in that prospect, even with the Big Ten and the SEC getting not only the lion’s share of college football’s TV money, but also built-in advantageous evaluation when it comes to postseason opportunities. There’s discomfort in that, as well.

Let’s face it: When it comes to the playoffs, comes to qualifying — as assigned by a committee of biased captains — for the CFP, the P2 conferences will find favor regardless of what number of invited teams is ultimately settled on.

It’s been sadly humorous to witness what some coaches from those leagues have been saying in recent weeks about the supersized challenges they face playing in their conferences, facing their boosted competition, versus what the relative weaklings — read: posers — from conferences like the Big 12 face in their leagues.

Foremost among those coaches has been Texas’ Steve Sarkisian. That’s right. The former BYU quarterback, who when he played for the Cougars was hypersensitive regarding any kind of question or criticism lobbed his way regarding his or his team’s abilities, has now one of the biggest mouths shouting about the superiority of the SEC, particularly when compared to an inferior conference like the Big 12, where BYU now lives.

Funny how that works.

While addressing the Touchdown Club of Houston, Sarkisian infamously said that his second- and third-string Longhorns, if they played the schedule of some Big 12 teams (take that Red Raiders), could go unbeaten and make the playoffs.

That was greeted in Big 12 circles with all the enthusiasm of a suggestion for a group swim in shark-infested waters. Sarkisian’s dismissive remark about “a team in our state playing in another conference” was so very happily absorbed by coaches at and fans of Texas Tech.

The swimmers bit the shark.

Sarkisian has subsequently acknowledged that his words were sloppy, without really taking them back. On the Always College Football podcast, the coach said: “There have been some things I’ve said I probably could have said better. But you say things, you live and you learn. …

“What I was getting at was the inequality in scheduling and strength of schedule in college football, and the task that the CFP committee has right now in trying to figure out who are the 12 best teams. We have our automatic qualifiers, so that automatically adjusts and shifts some of that. But the reality of it is, we’re all trying to figure this out. You can play a schedule, and if you go 11-1, regardless of what that schedule is, you’re going to make the playoffs. It doesn’t matter how many tough opponents you have.”

Ask BYU about the 11-1 comment. That’s precisely what the Cougars were last season before the Big 12 championship game, which 1) by past committee thinking isn’t supposed to count against a team’s regular-season performance, and 2) BYU lost to Texas Tech, causing the committee to discard the Cougars.

Strength of schedule and strength of record obviously should be taken into consideration when measuring teams for playoff invitation. The problem with both that and with what Sarkisian was getting at is the biases that come into play in judging those strengths, even with updated use of metrics. If the teams in the SEC are straightaway considered better than teams in other conferences, regardless of how they play in any particular season, if those rankings are dumped into a computer, are assigned based on less-than-perfect information from jump, what do you get? You get assumptions and advantages fixed on reputation, reputation enhanced by notable coaches squawking. Even when bits of info are thrown into configurations, stuff like where games are played, what the margin of victory is, and overall roster talent, there are values assigned that may or may not be completely accurate or properly determinative. Subjectivity is never wholly eliminated.

Folks around here who remember the bygone days of Utah and BYU playing in the WAC and the Mountain West and rolling up glossy records might haltingly give an inch, admitting now, after so many years, that as good as those teams looked at times, there would have to be concessions granted that the week-in-week-out challenge wasn’t quite as stiff as what some other teams might have faced.

But not enough to fully discount the Cougars’ and Utes’ talents and achievements. Administer some truth serum to the Alabama Crimson Tide team that was soundly defeated by the unbeaten Utes in the 2009 Sugar Bowl, and ask them about that. Admittedly, that was just one game, but it was added to some other decent-if-somewhat-exceptional input.

On account of the fractured nature of college football, namely that it’s impossible in any single season to know with certainty which teams from which leagues are going to be the best record-wise, and then schedule them against one another to make firm designations, there always will be some guessing involved in evaluating postseason righteousness. But automatically relying on brand name of team or league is not only unfair, it’s foolish.

Which is to say, if BYU or Utah or Texas Tech goes 11-1 in the Big 12 attendant with various non-conference games, and Texas or some other SEC or Big Ten team goes 11-1 or 10-2, who’s to say — again, with exactness — who’s the better, more deserving team?

Wins and losses have to count for and against something.

The best from the SEC and the Big Ten aren’t better just because they’re in the SEC and Big Ten. Few in the Big 12 have forgotten that Texas needed a bogus call in a game against Arizona State to beat the Devils in the playoffs year before last.

That’s all an argument for a vastly expanded playoff. Such an expansion might hurt traditional league constructs and the meaning of each and every game in the regular season. But it would bring with it the chance, at least, for gaining more telling matchups that would reveal more about which teams are good and which are great — via a string of head-to-head battles, regardless of which league they’re a part of. In the NFL, a team winning its division might not mean all that much, as long as that team qualifies for and advances through the playoffs. Either way, at season’s end, a true champion will have shown its competitive worthiness.

Is that what we’re looking for … worthiness? Or is it preferable to have a traditional fractured and exclusive regular-season setup, with cash and favor going to certain programs in certain conferences amid so much debate?

As for the possibility that select teams from the SEC and Big Ten — regardless of or maybe directly because of what transpires as dictated by bills put into play by the U.S. Congress — could breakaway and form their own entity separate from the NCAA, myriad problems come along with that idea. The primary one is this: As much as college football has started in on mirroring the NFL, what with large sums of money going to coaches and players, it is, in fact, not the NFL. It will never be the NFL. Talent-wise it is something less than.

The magic of college ball, at least major doses of it, comes from a kind of dream scenario in the minds of alums and fans, from one coast to the other, that their school, their team this year might break on through to something of significance. There are 138 FBS teams, 126 in the FCS. While it’s impractical for every fan to believe the school he or she roots for will have a stellar season and qualify for the playoffs in either of those segments, they do believe anyway. They buy tickets to games for the fun of it and to keep connection and participation and interest and hope alive.

If all but, say, 30 or 35 fan bases are excluded from that hope, that interest, that connection, that participation, what happens to college football? It turns into little more than another pro league that’s nowhere near as good as You-Know-What. Too many of those leagues have come and gone.

If Utah and BYU, or a whole lot of other schools, were not a part of the 30 or 35 football elite, how many fans around here would be captivated by watching or rooting for Georgia or Ohio State or Texas A&M? Not many. For their football fix, they’d glom onto the 49ers or the Rams or the Chiefs or the Jets (OK, not the Jets, let’s not get stupid here).

As imperfect as it is, college football will continue to change, moved as it always is by money, by certain powers wanting to grub that money. But if those powers get too greedy, too exclusive, too self-interested, then they could cut the heart out of the very things that make it as lucrative — and fun — as it is.

Go ahead and argue, then, over conference superiority and automatic bids and schedules and schedule strength and playoffs all the day long — same as it’s ever been — but not to the point of blowing off the webbed feet of the golden goose, nor killing hope and interest in the college game along the Wasatch Front and a hundred other fronts, here, there, everywhere, that embrace what they still think they’re a part of.