That was a huge argument on the Irish board this year, as to what exactly it will take in the future for ND to see the play off.
If you look at this year (the only one we have) of the playoff to base line off of.
The best team left out was a team without a conference championship game. And 1 loss. Meaning that a team playing on all cylinders at the end of the season, with a back loaded schedule was left out for the reasoning that they were named "co-champ" of their conference vs the only loss they had, along with they only had 12 games, where every member of the play off had 13. All of the play off competitors played a top 25 team at a neutral site, with 1 week to prepare and won.
ND I will argue will be almost impossible to keep out in any undefeated year, and I would make that same argument for any team that plays 12 D1A opponents and goes undefeated. However as soon as ND has any loss (especially late season losses) they will be at the mercy of the rest of the P5 conferences. Say this year ND only had 1 loss. The best possible selection would have been FSU (the only play off team ND played heads up). Then how do you pick ND over FSU? You can't. ND only played 12 games. Lost to the ACC Champ, and the ACC champ won in the conference championship.
ND against a 4 team play off will land on the short end of the stick far more often then not. Never has undefeated or nothing meant more then it does now. ND cannot compete on a 12 game schedule vs opponents that will play a 13 game schedule with their final game almost being a guaranteed top 25 on a neutral field. The Playoff committee has already said CCG will be part of the selection process. And in the media today, the CCG is the end all be all of of P5 conferences.
Now if you expand the playoff to 8 teams. Then everything changes. And all of this argument is for not. Because under that model you could easily have each of the P5 conference champions, plus 3 'at-large' selections. And then you are back to 'bowl busters'.
As to the person talking about the ND / Michigan series. If you think that is an 'every year' event. You should look at the total games played (42) with 9 of them being played before the War... World War 1 that is. For a total record of Michigan 24 wins, ND 17 wins, and 1 tie. Now look at PITT, how ND has played 69 times for a record of ND 47 PITT 21 and 1 tie.
Michigan, and tOSU dodged ND for a great many years that their rivalry was being played because neither wanted that strong of a non conference game on the schedule. Look at the years that Michigan wasn't on ND's schedule. They played every year (and multiples times a year) from 1887, until ND beat them for the first time in 1909. Michigan dropped all future games that day (literally) until 1942. Michigan won in 42 at S. Bend, and played again in 43 at Michigan Stadium. They lost that game, and canceled the series until 1978. Only since then has the bulk of the games been played, with the exception of a couple of times the schedule didn't line up.
This post was edited on 2/15 11:02 AM by IrishBlooded
