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The College Football Playoff selection show had all the drama of growing grass for Tennessee fans when the top teams in the sport were announced on Tuesday. That won’t likely be the case moving forward.

College football will move to a 12-team playoff next season and there’s every reason to believe that the Vols will be in the discussion each and every year. Of the next five seasons, Tennessee fans can expect to make the College Football Playoff at least two and, probably, three times. Depending on your point of view, that sounds either wildly optimistic or a bare minimum. However, that should be the standard.

If Josh Heupel is the coach that most, including me, believes he is, he’ll have the Vols in the discussion each of the next five years to make the College Football Playoff. There’s just too much evidence to think otherwise when you take individual games, like Alabama last year, or his ability to adapt his offense to different personnel, as he’s done this year. Heupel has Tennessee to a just-short-of elite level and the Vols should reap the benefits sooner rather than later. If they don’t, Heupel will face some serious criticism like so many coaches that seem close to breaking into the college football championship contenders club.

Seasons will soon be defined by what teams do in December, if they do anything at all. The usual dormant month in college football will be the new testing ground for the best programs in the nation. As for the other programs not in the Top 12, well, their fan bases can enjoy an incredible meaningless bowl game.

The Vols were excited to attend the Orange Bowl last season as much because of the pomp and circumstance as the ability to play – and beat – Clemson, a highly rated football team with recent rich tradition and a pesky penchant of topping the Vols in recruiting. However, with a College Football Playoff ongoing, bowls will become merely exhibition games, which they’ve already been for well over 20 years and are originally intended to be. The 12-team College Football Playoff will just hammer that point home.

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Coaches will soon be graded on how often they make it to the College Football Playoff when it expands to 12 games. No program of Tennessee’s ilk will be okay with missing the College Football Playoff for five consecutive seasons. The College Football Playoff will add pressure to coaches and, almost assuredly, cost some of them their jobs. It makes a coach’s success much easier to quantify. You’re in or you’re out.

The Vols, who were ranked 17th in the first CFP rankings, would be in the discussion to make the playoffs this season, but with two losses, they’d likely have to win out, which would include a win over Georgia, which was ranked No. 2 on Tuesday.

Tennessee doesn’t need a golden ticket to make the College Football Playoff on an annual basis. They have more support, via recruiting spending and NIL payouts, better facilities and more tradition than over 100 college football programs that will try to make the playoff. For Tennessee, it won’t be about loading up for a fortunate run, as Texas Christian did last season. The Vols should be knocking on the door of the College Football Playoff each season.

So what are fair expectations for Tennessee is this newly expanded College Football Playoff. First, the Vols should make the playoff three of the next five seasons. Second, Tennessee should host at least one playoff game, which means ranking in the top eight, and play in one national championship game. Think a home playoff game in Neyland Stadium would draw a crowd?

There may well come a day in which a super conference rules college football, as has been widely predicted. Tennessee will be one of the teams invited to that party. Until then, they should be able to punch their own ticket – fairly often – to what will be one of the greatest spectacles in American sports.

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