re: After ducking USC, Notre Dama will play eight teams with at least 8 losses in 2025.

Guaranteed to be in the playoffs? They literally just missed it. What kind of guarantee is that?

I dunno. I mean, it's bad but I was expecting worse. Most of these games are scheduled a few years out and you don't know how good they're going to be at the time you agree to play them.

Wisconsin, Michigan State, North Carolina, BYU, SMU are not great at all but they are capable of being very solid in any given year. It's not like they're scheduling six or seven Western Iowa States or Bowling Greens.

09/06 - vs Wisconsin (in Green Bay, WI)
09/12 - Rice
09/19 - Michigan State
09/26 - at Purdue
10/03 - at North Carolina
10/17 - at BYU
10/31 - vs Navy (in Foxborough, MA)
11/07 - Miami (FL)
11/21 - Boston College
TBA - SMU
TBA - Stanford (Tentative)
TBA - at Syracuse

As others are saying- if they lose the Miami game and any other, they're likely out of the playoff. You can argue the system is working, at least as far as weak scheduling is concerned.

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They are guaranteed a spot if they finish ranked in the Top 12.

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People keep reeeeee-ing about this but I would hope the top 12 teams would be in a 12 team playoff

Basically the only gripe is if Notre Dame finishes at #12

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College football has turned into a complete joke. Who really cares at this point?


Is that why the overall ratings are higher than in the past?

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Reference NASCAR. They were riding a wave of viewership, so they made decisions to cater their new audience. The new audience got bored with the product and stopped watching.

By that time they had moved so far away from their original model that they had almost lost their core audience. Now they are seven years deep into their lowest ratings run in decades. The Daytona 500, from 1979-2013 could count on getting 10-15 million viewers annually. Now they are lucky to get 8, with some years dipping down to 4 or 5 million.

College football is chasing the money and the new audience and look to be making the same decisions as NASCAR. The playoff has gotten new eyes on the game, we'll have to see if it sustains.

Michigan State and Purdue are historic rivals for ND. Hopefully they show up and take the trophies. Michigan State 28 wins and Purdue 25 wins only behind USC with 38 wins against ND. But for decades ND would play MSU, Purdue, and USC every year.

Had a post that somehow got deleted and I’m not sure why (don’t know if I accidentally deleted it). But anyway:

1) ND did not duck USC. That makes no sense. ND has won 7 of the last 8. ND replaced USC with at BYU. (USC will end up replacing ND with some G5 Cali program probably.)

There are many stipulations/circumstances to a week 0 game that doesn’t make it actually a legitimately feasible option and USC knew that. It wasn’t a good faith offer. The game also would’ve been end of year in LA next season, not middle of the season, if played as normal. It was played that way in 2024, under the 9-game B1G season.

2) The MOU is irrelevant. If ND would be at 11 or 12 otherwise, the committee will simply place them at 13 instead to make sure #10 gets in instead of ND.

3a) The schedule sucks, yes. But that means ND will have to go 11-1. 10-2 won’t make it.

3b) The schedule sucks, but games like Wisconsin and MSU were scheduled when they were better teams/programs. ND has future home-and-homes with IU, Bama, Auburn, Texas, Michigan, Florida, an annual series with Clemson for 12 years… ND can’t control if programs go through down cycles. ND can’t control if the ACC sucks (and joining the ACC full-time would actually make the schedule worse).

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The Committee left them out with 2 losses last year because of their weak schedule and not winning a conference.

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The Committee left ND out because the last spot was between two teams that played each other and ND lost. There is no doubt in my mind that the Committee would have put ND in over Miami if they never played each other.

“It's time to just start locking them out unless they pick a conference. frick this shite. The Power 4 need to get together on this and let them know that they'll steer the playoff committee to begin locking independents out”

I don’t understand this thought process. Everyone hates the direction college football is going. Hate bloated conferences. Why should the school that been Independent for over 120 years be forced to do the thing everyone hates?

When is the last time Notre Dame got blown out by a “real team?”

The Brian Kelly era? Who is living in the past?

Here’s the thing, they won’t get punished for it. The committee has shown over and over again that you get punished for having losses. Play a bullshite schedule and get through the season undefeated and they will reward you with a playoff spot.