Notre Dame might need luck and more to make College Football Playoff
With only one game left in its regular season, Notre Dame is suddenly facing an uphill battle to reach the College Football Playoff.
After two weeks inside the top four, the Fighting Irish slipped to a season-low No. 6 in this week’s selection committee ranking, penalized by circumstances in — last Saturday's sloppy win against Boston College — and out of its control.
As Notre Dame was struggling with the Eagles, cellar dwellers in the Atlantic Coast Conference, No. 5 Michigan State was handing Ohio State its first loss of the season. That the Spartans won on the road only strengthened their case for a leap in the Playoff rankings.
Hours later, Oklahoma (No. 3 in this week's ranking) defeated TCU (now No. 19) to move within a rivalry win against Oklahoma State of the Big 12 Conference championship. Still-unbeaten Iowa continued its steady push for the Playoff, moving from fifth to fourth after defeating Purdue.
“The committee does recognize that teams change throughout the season,” Playoff selection committee chairman Jeff Long said. “They certainly have a more defined body of work at the end of the season.”
Notre Dame always had a slim margin for error. The Fighting Irish’s independent status removes the chance for a conference championship; as seen in last season’s final rankings, a conference title is the final piece of the puzzle in the Playoff selection committee’s decision-making process. Down seasons from Texas and Georgia Tech have hurt the Irish’s cause, as has USC’s early-season malaise under former coach Steve Sarkisian.
Now, as the regular season winds to a close, the Irish need help.
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Oklahoma controls its Playoff future: Beating No. 11 Oklahoma State on Saturday would give OU the outright conference championship and another win on a rapidly growing résumé. The Sooners have the opportunity to cap the regular season with three victories in a row against ranked competition; it doesn’t seem so long ago — certainly after a neutral-site loss to Texas on October 10 — that this team was written out of the race.
Oklahoma has “an increasingly impressive body of work,” said Long, who added that the Sooners’ move up the rankings was a reflection of how they’ve fared since losing to the Longhorns.
“They have performed at a high level since then, so they've overcome that loss with their play on the field and the success they've had and the wins they've accumulated, with now six wins over teams with .500 or better records. So it's more a function of how they've played and performed that has moved them past that loss to Texas.”
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The same might be said of Iowa and Michigan State. If the Hawkeyes and Spartans avoid losses against Nebraska and Penn State, respectively, the Big Ten Conference title game can be viewed as a Playoff play-in game. Iowa, which Long said was placed ahead of Michigan State due to its unbeaten record, would almost certainly remain in the top four with a win against the Spartans.
“We thought Iowa and Michigan State were extremely close,” Long said. “But I think in the end, they were so close that the fact that Iowa is undefeated and they have not had a misstep along the way at this point gave them the edge against Michigan State.”
Where does this leave Notre Dame? All the Irish control is Saturday’s matchup with No. 9 Stanford, which provides one final opportunity to impress the selection committee — and remember that Notre Dame will not play on Dec. 5, when the Hawkeyes and Spartans could meet to decide the Big Ten.
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It will take a win against Stanford, obviously, but it may take more than that: It might take a dominant win, one akin to Ohio State’s romp of Wisconsin to win the Big Ten championship nearly a year ago. Even that may not be enough.
Barring an unlikely loss by Clemson or Alabama — and this admittedly has been the season of unlikely events — Notre Dame will spend Saturday not just playing Stanford but cheering for Oklahoma State and Penn State, hoping an upset clears its path back into the top four.
This is what happens when résumés even out in November. Earlier this season Notre Dame’s lack of conference affiliation boosted its strength of schedule while others, particularly in the Big 12, feasted on cupcakes in non-league play and the lower half of its own conference.
And maybe this is what happens when a selection committee looks a little ahead and decides to be proactive. In conjunction with wins from Oklahoma and Michigan State, the Irish’s sloppy performance against Boston College gave the committee the chance to avoid having to make a potentially difficult decision on Dec. 6: picking between a one-loss conference champion and one-loss Notre Dame.
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