I think they were hosed.
Don’t schedule them.
wy69
Another year without a championship for Notre Dame. Not everyone is impressed by their relatively weak schedule. When you play four subpar teams on your schedule, you tend to look better than you are. Also ever since Notre Dame, ostensibly a Catholic institution invited the bloody pro abortion Obama to give their commencement address and actually conferred on him a “Doctor of Laws” degree, they have been a cursed place and have not won any championships.
Notre Dame lost to the only two teams on their schedule who made the playoffs. Yeah, the format is stupid that allows Tulane and James Madison to get automatic bids for winning their conference, but Notre Dame didn’t do anything special to get in as an at-large team.
I think it’s actually pretty easy to fix the system.
1. Scrap the Conference Championship Games.
2. Only the top four teams in a conference are eligible for the playoffs
3. Instead of the Conference Championship Game, there will be a Conference Play-In game for the top four teams. The #4 seed plays at the #1 seed, and the #3 seed plays at the #2 seed. The winners automatically qualify, and the losers would have to get an at-large bid.
4. As current, seed the teams 1 through 12, if a G5 team is not in the Top 12, the #12 seed will play the top-ranked G5 team, the week before the First Round game, with the winner advancing in the #12 position.
When you looked at the Playoff Rankings, BYU was the #12 team, they would have to play Tulane the week before the First Round Games.
This would virtually solve all of the issues. Now every playoff team would have to play an extra game, and now you get the max number of good teams in the Final 12.
They are not as good as Miami and Texas A&M so they should stop whining about getting snubbed for the playoffs.
Ironically, it allowed my alma mater, App State, to get into a bowl game despite a losing record. We also play our former Southern Conference rival Georgia Southern. Both teams have multiple FCS natties.
When we win, we will both be 6-7
A few years ago, only 4 teams were invited to the playoffs, and the 5th team would complain about being snubbed.
Now there are 12 teams invited, and of course the 13th team complains about being snubbed.
Soon, there will be 16 teams invited to the playoffs, and the 17th team will complain.
/spit
ND’s schedule is unusually weak this year...
Many of the “name” colleges and universities schedule weak or smaller market teams to “pad” their record to try to get into the CFP or bowl games to bolster their funds.
ND ended up 10-2 on the year and that record according to the polls from the people that determine the playoffs was only good enough for 8th place on the list tied with Oklahoma as there were seven other teams that had a better record and far more TV face time nationally.
But tossing the extra money from the bowl game could be a kiss of death for them in their bid for anything next year as the media gets pissy about being shunned.
wy69
Just another example of the Golden Domers thinking they are bigger than the sport. The playoff committee should not select teams that refuse to play in a conference.
Players are simply not going to risk their potential NFL careers to play in a meaningless bowl game.
Get rid of the bowl games.
I haven’t followed this stuff in years, so I might be wrong. Does ND still play an independent schedule? Or are they part of a conference? Winning one of the automatic bid conferences makes it a lot easier to get into the playoffs.
ND played an independent schedule because it made more money for them because everyone wanted them on their schedule.
Sometimes you reap what you sow.