“I don’t think a team would be unduly penalized if they lost in a conference championship game,” Clark said this week. “The fact that they’re in a championship game, I don’t think that is going to be a major data point that the committee will evaluate. It will just be what happened in that game.”
In the most literal sense, that could mean if Notre Dame and a Power 4 team both finish 11-1, the conference team that loses on championship weekend wouldn’t be penalized for it. Or, to pick out a more real-world scenario, if
BYU and
Iowa State meet in the Big 12 Championship Game both undefeated, the loser would be treated as a 12-0 team by the committee after losing. Or maybe
Penn State vs.
Oregon in the Big Ten. Or even
Clemson vs.
Miami in the ACC.
You get the point. Because for all the algorithms available to
project the field at The Athletic (or anywhere else), there’s a human element we don’t understand because no one has ever set a 12-team field. How much does beating a potential SEC champion help? How much does losing to a mediocre MAC program hurt? It’s impossible to know which trap doors might open for Notre Dame, whether they bump the Irish out of hosting a first-round game or perhaps even out of the field entirely.
