Not to go all I told you so here but …

And this comes just when I was getting surprisingly comfortable with 12 teams in the College Football Playoff.

Remember, for years I hollered at all of them to get off my lawn about this football crisis.

I was sincere. I was worried about the sport. Liked the way things were. I was, admittedly, somewhat crabby about it.

I was — and it pains me to say this — wrong on at least one count.

College football had a year with the 12-team playoff looming as the carrot on a stick out there, and it did not, despite my fears all this time, it did not ruin the best regular season in all of sports.

Not even a flesh wound, best I could tell.

But …

Just as I had always warned, the first 12-team bracket wasn’t even released yet and already the voraciously thirsty playoff-centrists were screaming and belly-aching and sometimes bellowing that this was — get ready for it, here it comes — just more rock-solid proof that the playoff has to expand to 16 teams, like yesterday if not sooner.

So, who didn’t see that coming?

There’s just no satisfying these people.

I guess it’s not comical enough to see teams arguing (and mostly whining) while breaking out pie charts and power-point wizardry to (supposedly) prove, often with side-by-side comparisons, that Their Team should be ranked No. 12 instead of No. 13 and mostly ahead of Your Team.

Soon they will want to roll out  the same dog-and-pony show arguing the coveted 16-17 spots.

And don’t think for a minute that it will end there.

OK, I’ll say it. If the best regular season in sports can survive the 12-team playoff, it can probably muddle through to a 16-team bracket relatively intact, too.

But even if it doesn’t devalue to regular season, at what point does it become so bloated that it waters down the almighty playoff?

The first unveiling of the 12-team model apparently caught the ire of the Southeastern Conference when word broke that they planned to have a bigger playoff without Alabama.

Can you imagine? Oh, the nerve. SMU got in over the Tide.

Well, at any rate, the Tuscaloosa branch of the conference is in quite the tither.

The rest of the SEC actually seems to be holding up remarkably well over this Slighting of the Tide.

In fact, the other conference outposts have been so angry at the selection committee, and so sympathetic to Bama’s plight, that there have been scattered reports of organized hyena-laughing parties from Baton Rouge to Knoxville to Gainesville.

Alabama’s calculated reaction, of course, has been to stomp its feet, take its toys and threaten to go home — or at least suggest that it might quit scheduling non-conference teams from power-four conferences. That’s the spirit — get mad at the CFP, kick and punish your own fans.

Maybe it’s not the year for that Crimson tirade anyway.

When it came down to the SMU-Alabama cross-examination for the last seat at the table, the selection committee was in a no-win situation.

It was also at the worst possible time — with the world wondering what the committee would value.

After SMU’s buzzer-beating loss to the Clemson Bid-Stealers in the ACC championship game, the committee could have left the Ponies out when Clemson unexpectedly earned an automatic bid.

But, since SMU was safely in the week before, kicking it to the street would beg the question: What’s the risk/reward of playing in a conference championship game?

We don’t need to be devaluing the spectacles of the conference championship games — and they might to be low-hanging fruit for the playoff-centrists to eliminate.

Alabama didn’t play in the SEC championship game and expected to be rewarded.

On the other hand, the Tide did have a tougher schedule than SMU.

So, in forsaking the Tide, the committee would be sending the message that: No, Bama, you don’t run college football.

Well, that and the notion that the number of wins matter more than who you beat.

So do you punish teams for making the conference title game? Or for playing tougher schedules?

Choosing SMU doesn’t necessarily set a precedent. Every year can be different circumstances, starting from scratch.

Still, Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said his school will now reassess its non-conference schedule.

What? That was a non-factor this year. The Tide’s only non-conference, power four opponent was a 5-7 Wisconsin team.

Alabama got left out because it lost three games — all conference games, two of them to 6-6 teams Vanderbilt and Oklahoma.

But pray for Alabama anyway.

*

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the American Press. Contact him at Scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com