Too often, I can see that there are many viable programmers without college degrees in Computer Science, Informatics, etc. 

Now that I've been reading more articles about underperforming education and the insignificance of college degrees (especially as a programmer), will a college degree ever hurt my employability? (Also accounting for four years from now when I do graduate)

P.S. I'm going to UC Irvine; would the school itself matter in the significance of the degree?

No.

The reason it seems like quite a few self-taught programmers "make it big without a degree" is the same as the reason why it seems like all people who make it to 120 lived on cigarettes and bacon and drank a bottle of whiskey every day: exceptions draw a lot of attention.

Good self-taught/self-made programmers are actually quite rare. I've inherited codebases in the past that were built by self-taught programmers. Needless to say, atrocities such as hash tables being used as arrays abounded. You don't hear about it because it's pretty much what can be expected - it's only when you see work in real life that was done by people without formal Computer Science knowledge that you can see how much they're missing. Of course, it's a sliding scale (in other words, look at it through a pair of 80/20 goggles), and individually some people can be great - but on the whole - everything else being the same - the smart money is on the person with a degree.
