Why wait for CFP expansion?

12-team playoff such a good idea that NCAA should implement it immediately

HOUSTON — We cannot agree on anything anymore.

Blowing up or reimagining the Astrodome. Wearing masks indoors. How bad the Texans will be in 2021.

Inflation: Real or hot air? National politics, big tech and global warming? Ha. Don’t get me started.

But college football finally expanding the College Football Playoff ?

Hallelujah! And then some. This we can all agree on.

This brings our incredibly diverse country closer together.

This unites America, once again, in the name of the greater good.

It was revealed this week that the big ol’ fancy CFP committee is considering whether to expand the current four-team playoff system to 12. I would have been fine with a nice, even eight. But some wise soul told me in my childhood to never look a gift horse in the mouth, and I would be an absolute adult idiot to keep complaining about something I’ve spent the last seven years complaining about.

Expand, expand, expand. Please. Yes. Now. Immediately.

According to ESPN — which also just happens to televise the CFP — the earliest that the new 12-team format could take over our TVs for the holidays is 2023.

I’m sure you’re already thinking what I’ve been thinking.

Why wait?

The cost of living is only going up, the future is highly uncertain, and aliens could invade at any time.

If it makes sense in 2021 to expand the CFP to 12 schools, it also makes sense in 2021 to allow 12 different programs to have a realistic chance at winning the national championship.

Equality now. And stop wasting our time debating what was inevitable when the CFP started taking over our college football lives in 2014.

I’m tired of Alabama.

You’re tired of Ohio State and Clemson.

We’re all exhausted by Notre Dame.

Just imagine how cool it would have been if Coastal Carolina had been allowed to participate in the (snobby) CFP last season.

Just imagine the regional and statewide buzz if the (elitist)

CFP hadn’t insisted on maintaining a wall that kept Texas A&M out of the four-team 2020 playoff that it belonged in?

Now think back to the sweet magic of 2015.

The University of Houston had one of the best college football teams in America. Tom Herman was doing big, bold things leading the revived Cougars. Then UH went national in the Peach Bowl, bullying Jimbo Fisher’s Florida State Seminoles in a no-doubt 38-24 victory that still represents the modern peak of Coogs football.

That UH team could have

done serious damage in an expanded CFP.

Those Coogs wouldn’t have been held back by old, outdated ways and limited by their nonPower Five conference affiliation.

The four teams that made the CFP in 2015? SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten.

Michigan State was destroyed 38-0 by Alabama in the semifinals.

What if UH had received the invitation that it deserved?

Maybe Herman isn’t forced to become an offensive analyst/ special projects coach with the Chicago Bears and Dana Holgorsen doesn’t go 7-13 during his initial two seasons replacing Major Applewhite.

I’m just saying.

In all seriousness, there was a time when I foolishly thought that four teams was enough.

And expanding all the way to 12 won’t be perfect.

There will be more injuries

and more concussions. More wear and tear on young bodies that ultimately are making the

NCAA an absurd amount of cash.

College football also will move even closer toward professional football, with the expanded 12-team CFP champion potentially playing as many as 17 games — Alabama went a measly 13-0 last year when Nick Saban won it all again.

But the whole getting paid for your name, image and likeness in college thing is about to change everything, anyway. And it’s not like anyone eventually will long for the good ol’ days, when the Motel 6 Cactus Bowl really meant something.

The cat is unbelievably fat in 2021. It’s never going back in the bag.

Somewhere, a naive cynic will say this is just typical sports in America. More, more, more. Then more and more and more.

In the real world, college football is awesome, the potential of more big-time college football is even more awesome, and we should be past the point in society where millions of incredibly passionate fans and about 10 schools feel painfully left out every year because of antiquated ways.

The weekly “Who’s No. 1?” debate probably still will come down to Alabama.

Or Clemson.

Or Ohio State.

The almighty SEC will receive more free national advertising.

Notre Dame will probably still get in.

But now Texas A&M will be granted a CFP chance, Texas might eventually have a shot at making the Final 12, and UH can receive an official invite whenever the Coogs get their football act back together.

This should be the easiest decision in NCAA history.

The big money will grow even larger.

The College Football Playoff can actually be a playoff.

Lynne Sladky / Associated Press Texas A&M finished fifth last year in the final CFP standings, just outside the four-team playoff. The Aggies’ only loss was 52-24 to Alabama, which beat Ohio State by the same score in the title game.

Mike Ehrmann / Tribune News Service Under the current CFP system, Alabama is one of the few teams with a realistic shot year in and year out to win a national title.

John Amis / Associated Press An expanded playoff will give upstarts such as Coastal Carolina a chance to prove they belong with college football’s heavyweights.