Insert/Create Category if it doesn’t exist

My goal is just to use some type of default method for checking if category exist in WordPress, and if it doesn’t, add the category. Same with tags.

Here is a mess I made trying to make it happen:

<?php if ( is_term( ‘football’ , ‘category’ ) ){

}

else (

$new_cat = array(‘cat_name’ => ‘Football’, ‘category_description’ => ‘Football Blogs’, ‘category_nicename’ => ‘category-slug’, ‘category_parent’ => ‘sports’);

$my_cat_id = wp_insert_category($new_cat); )

I plan to add this as a plugin. Any thoughts or help would be great!