We dont have to go 12-0, we have to beat good teams. Had we lost to UVA and beat Clemson we would be in top 4. Right now both MSU and OU have better wins than us. I think we have beat better teams than Iowa but they are undefeated.
Nah assume ND played and beat those two teams. a 9-2 MSU is ranked below any 9-2 Stanford team. A 8-3 Michigan may not even be in the top 25. And that's assuming those teams kept their heads up and didn't domino losses after a big loss like USC.
When ND beat Georgia Tech it was 14 in the country. USC is a former #6 in the country. Pittsburgh, Temple, Stanford, Navy, USC, Georgia Tech are all onetime ranked teams that ND has beat. ND played a good schedule. There's a catch-22 is that without a championship, ND has to beat teams good teams but at the same time teams they beat then subsequently look bad, and obviously as teams lose they can start to build on those losses, looking even worse.
I had a thought all those weeks when ND was overvalued due to frontloaded schedule how even if they had beat Clemson they probably wouldn't have been higher than the teams they were behind when they were 4th. Obviously the ACC would have dropped its slot so ND would move up 1 spot but it probably wouldn't have been ahead of Alabama or OSU.
Who has ND beat? For its part a 1 loss Clemson would be greatly devalued... similar to how FSU was around 15 after its loss. People would still be saying beating a Baylor or whoever is a "better win" than beating a Clemson team that Clemsons. Who knows if a dispirited Clemson team even beats FSU or doesn't end the season at 9-3?
ND played a good schedule and the way the final game is Stanford is probably as good as you could realistically have scheduled, since there's no way to know when you schedule how the season will shake out. Obviously Stanford dropping that one game hurts but ND is in pretty good position.
ND is about where it was destined to be after it dropped the Clemson game. It was always going to be about SEC, B1g, Big 12 with possible ACC and PAC with squatter's rights for the Playoffs. For ND to control its destiny it needed Clemson to lose and drop out of the top 5. Ppl in the know have been saying this since week 5. Otherwise every possible "best case" scenario was exactly where ND is... either right on the cutline or the first team out.
This entire thing is scaled to benefit conference champions. ND needed conferences to eliminate themselves. People counting on "good losses" or banking on Big-12 needing to go undefeated weren't looking at the big picture. If Okla didn't exist, ND would be in the same position but below Baylor for that last spot. It's not really about Oklahoma but the fact that with the ACC hogging a spot, ND needed help from some other conference to eliminate itself.
Kelly & co haven't made things difficult for the Committee these past 2 weeks but a big win versus BC wouldn't have counted much versus someone taking down Baylor then TCU in a row. If Oklahoma hadn't stepped up, you would be looking at an undefeated Baylor team who had just handled both OKLA and Okie State. In any case just like it was very unlikely that anyone was going to run through that Big 12 gauntlet spotless it was unlikely that at least 1 team wouldn't look good going through those tough games. ND scheduled about as well as you can expect and the kids executed as well as anyone could have expected once they did drop that one game at Clemson.
It's going to come down to how good ND looks versus Stanford. Then it's a dice roll. Honestly if you had 3 different committees this year you'd probably be split on ND being in or out assuming they and Oklahoma both win out
