College Football Playoff: How Notre Dame can still get in
By John Buhler
Notre Dame didn’t get a win vs. Notre Dame but does that mean their College Football Playoff odds are dead or can the Irish still find a way in?
The game of the Week 4 college football slate did not disappoint. Though it wasn’t a high-scoring affair, the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs were able to hold their own against the visiting No. 7 Notre Dame Fighting Irish to stay undefeated. The Dawgs beat the Irish 23-17 to improve to 4-0 but were unable to cover the 14-point spread.
Notre Dame held a 10-7 lead heading into halftime but was outscored 16-7 in the second half to come up short yet again in a big road game against a top-10 team. Georgia wasn’t perfect but found a way to get the job done, as the Dawgs survived their first big test of the season.
Should Georgia defeat its archrival in the Florida Gators down in Jacksonville in a few weeks, the Dawgs will be in the driver’s seat to win the SEC East for the third year in a row. In short, Georgia is very, very much in the mix for the sixth annual College Football Playoff. But can we say the same thing about the Irish at this point?
Getting back to the Playoff as an at-large national independent will be a tall task for the Irish. It’s not impossible, but the likelihood of getting in after losing what will be their biggest game of the season isn’t all that great.
What Notre Dame needs is to win the rest of their nine regular-season games and see absolute chaos in a few Power 5 conferences, preferably the ACC. Notre Dame has as of Saturday night two more games against ranked opponents: at home versus the No. 21 Virginia Cavaliers next week and on the road versus the No. 11 Michigan Wolverines on Oct. 26.
Virginia survived a scare on Saturday night versus the Old Dominion Monarchs. Though the Hoos aren’t a serious contender in the ACC, they are the best that the Coastal Division has to offer. They won’t drop out of the top 25 after beating Old Dominion to improve to No. 4. So a win over a ranked team will give the Irish a slight boost after a tough loss in Athens on Saturday night.
Notre Dame should beat Virginia and stands a great chance at knocking off Michigan in the Big House. However, the Wolverines looked terrible in their Week 4 loss to the Wisconsin Badgers. Michigan may still be ranked by that point when Notre Dame comes to town, but there are no guarantees.
So those are two games that Notre Dame has to have to help them get in, but they won’t be enough. The Irish will need to beat presumably two other ranked teams to help offset their tight road loss to Georgia. Who else could be ranked when Notre Dame takes them on?
The best bet outside of Virginia and Michigan has to be the rival USC Trojans. One could argue that the rival Navy Midshipmen could be ranked as well in the latter part of their season. Notre Dame could certainly beat both, but even then that won’t be enough. The Irish need Power 5 conferences to cannibalize and others to collapse entirely.
Notre Dame needs Georgia to lose probably twice and for SEC teams like the Alabama Crimson Tide, the Auburn Tigers, the Florida Gators and the LSU Tigers to all lose at least once. They will probably need the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Wisconsin Badgers to lose in the Big Ten. The Oklahoma Sooners losing in the Big 12 and the Clemson Tigers losing in the ACC only help, too.
In short, Notre Dame has to win out and hope that every team they play on their schedule loses as few games as possible in the contests leading up to their Notre Dame meeting. Notre Dame will likely need a two-loss Power 5 champion or two, as well as a conference like the Pac-12 being a total none factor.
Overall, the prognosis of Notre Dame getting into the Playoff is not good, but it’s still far too early to eliminate the Irish. However, not having a conference championship game as a crucial 13th data point, as well as not having an overly difficult schedule remaining doesn’t help them at all.
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The Playoff doesn’t seem like a realistic possibility, but not one that is completely out of the realm of possibility. All this aside, Notre Dame does stand a very good chance of getting a New Year’s Six Bowl bid as either an at-large team or a bid to the Orange Bowl if the ACC can’t get a quality second team into the New Year’s Six outside of Clemson making the College Football Playoff.