College football nearly lost its mind Wednesday over a report about possible Playoff expansion.

I started calling for expansion 5 years ago, but, sure, come on in, there’s still plenty of room on my 8-team bus.

On that and other random thoughts I’ve had about the state of college football after an eventful, newsy start to December:

8. This won’t be popular, but there’s only one person to blame for Tua Tagovailoa not winning the Heisman …

And it’s not Kyler Murray.

It’s Nick Saban.

Saban was in an impossible spot, juggling what was best for the team (Tagovailoa) vs. his admirable and understandable devotion to Jalen Hurts. As Saban said repeatedly, both deserved to play. He was absolutely right about that.

But the only reason Tagovailoa didn’t throw 50 TD passes this season is Saban didn’t allow him to. Saban either shut down the passing game in the second half or turned it over to Hurts.

Tagovailoa, the best quarterback in Alabama history, should have become the first Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback in Alabama history.

We’ll have to wait until next year for that.

7. Having said that, Tagovailoa still should have won the Heisman

He didn’t because he played poorly in the only game the vast majority of voters saw him play, and his numbers weren’t staggering enough to overcome it.

The former is the biggest problem with the voting process. Fortunately, I have a solution …

6. The Playoff Selection Committee needs to take over the Heisman voting

Pro tip: Beat writers don’t spend much time watching anybody other than the team they cover.

They don’t have time. They pour everything they have into owning their beat. They do it for a lot of reasons, primarily competitive ones. They don’t want to get beat on a breaking news story, or developing a source. There is ego involved. Huge amounts of ego.

I’ve had beat writers show up at games even after I gave them the day off. It’s their team, their baby. In many ways, it becomes their identity.

As a manager, I want that single-minded devotion. Whether supervising Big Ten coverage, ACC coverage or now, SEC coverage, I don’t want them “wasting” time watching other leagues. I want them focused on the task at hand.

On a typical Saturday, reporters arrive 3 hours before the game and don’t leave until 3 hours after the game. Every minute in between is spent working their beat in some capacity, yes, even over the complementary lunch spread. There’s no time to watch other games. They form opinions from afar, by watching highlights and scanning box scores. They peruse advanced stats. The Heisman FAQ admits as much.

And they wait for that “Heisman moment.”

If everybody were really paying attention, do you think we’d even need a “Heisman moment?” No, that’s a marketing term to clue in the general audience that something special is happening over here.

Who has time to watch every game? The Playoff committee.

Who already is watching every game? The Playoff committee.

Whose job is it to watch every game? The Playoff committee’s.

Who doesn’t have personal biases? The Playoff committee.

Who has a better football acumen? The Playoff committee.

Ego will prevent this from ever changing hands. The FWAA would never allow it. There are nearly 900 media members who have a vote. Some consider it a career highlight, though obtaining a vote requires no special skill. Some no longer even cover the sport. It’s a very 1970s way of determining a winner — which was fine when nobody could watch games coast-to-coast.

There’s a better way: Put it in the hands of the 13 committee members who also decide which teams make the Playoff. They’re in the best position to judge.

I trust their ability to get it right far more than I do the 900+ Heisman voters who are barely paying attention to anything outside their area code.

5. Am I crazy to think Jalen Hurts might actually stay?

Yes, I am. It makes no sense. I know that. I’m the guy who launched the Hurts-to-Auburn dream in August, after all.

But Hurts loves Alabama. Saban loves Hurts. And, without question, Dan Enos is turning Hurts into an honest-to-goodness quarterback. Show me another throw like the one he made against Georgia, where he waited, waited, waited, rolled, actually pointed to a receiver to keep fighting to get open, and then delivered a strike. He had 3 chances to run … and still passed. That’s not on tape anywhere.

Sharing snaps worked perfectly in 2018, and that was all improv. Would both sign up for it again? Doubtful. Does Hurts really think he’s going to develop even more elsewhere than he would with Enos? Also doubtful.

It’s a 1,000-to-1 long shot, and I don’t believe he’s staying, but if this is about development, there’s a case to be made.

Unless …

4. It would be fun to see Hurts at Oklahoma

I’ve been a Lincoln Riley guy since his ECU days, when UNC and N.C. State couldn’t stop his offenses.

Riley might be the brightest offensive mind in the game. Which is a scary thought for the SEC because he isn’t going anywhere, which means Oklahoma isn’t going anywhere.

Especially if he adds another Heisman-caliber quarterback like Hurts to the fold.

3. 8-team Playoff? Better late than never

Since the moment they rolled out the 4-team Playoff, I’ve been asking for 8. Five Power 5 teams fighting for 4 spots was never going to work and I’ve never wavered in how stupid it was to think otherwise. Contracts are written to be shredded, so the length of the first deal — it expires after 2026 — never was a concern. Still isn’t. I said last November that the quickest path to an 8-team Playoff was if the Big Ten got shut out. It did, but commissioner Jim Delany didn’t budge. Now that the Big Ten has been shut out in back-to-back Playoff years, finally, there is movement to expand to 8. Soon, too. Barry Alvarez has picked up the hammer. It’s about time. It’s actually 5 years past time.

Playoff expansion is coming. Embrace it.

I’m convinced the only people who support a 4-team Playoff are talk-show hosts who bloviate from August to December about who the 4 should be. They’ve been making the same arguments for 5 years. It was annoying then. It’s downright unlistenable now.

Get some new material, boys.

2. Why Kyler Murray should stick to football

Long before I knew who Nick Saban was, I knew who Andruw Jones was. At the time, Jones was a 19-year-old about to go from Class A mauler to World Series hero, all in the span of 6 months. I was at Baseball America, covering the ride. (Saban was at Michigan State in 1996, but I had to look that up.)

All of which is to say: I spent enough time covering minor league baseball to know how difficult it is, even for first-round picks, to make it to the major leagues, much less become a star.

There are no guarantees. No sport has more first-round busts than baseball. The NBA has more famous busts, but not more. Baseball’s first round is littered with more cautionary tales than storybook endings.

The long-range money in baseball is unmatched. But for every Bryce Harper, there are 100 Byron Buxtons, first-round picks who don’t make it big or make it at all. I could have picked any year, but Buxton’s draft class is a good example and he was the unquestioned can’t-miss star who missed. In his 2012 class, 21 of 60 first-round and supplemental picks have yet to make the major leagues.

Everybody thinks Kyler Murray will make it. They think that about every first-round pick, too.

He might. But in the next 6 years, especially the way the NFL is evolving, he has a greater chance of making $100 million as a starting quarterback than an All-Star center fielder.

1. How much would it cost Auburn to land Dabo?

Will he be college football’s first $100 million coach?

It makes no sense, now or next year, for Auburn to eat Gus Malzahn simply to hire a $5 million a year coach. The Tigers would have to win the Dabo Swinney Sweepstakes … you know, before Nick leaves at some point and hands him the job.