In a recent post, I mentioned my famous Irish temper and affinity for Notre Dame football. For those of you who follow the sport, you know what comes next. My Irish were excluded from the College Football Playoff. There are always good arguments for and against the “first team out” when making such a selection. I myself could make the case for including Miami and Alabama, as well as against including Notre Dame. It’s the absence of such arguments in this case that has me blood boilin’.
But let’s set that aside for the moment, and instead channel that anger into something more productive: what lessons can be learned from this year’s playoff selection?
First, for my scorned Irish: Take care of business. If we had won either of our first two games, we would be arguing over whether Notre Dame deserved a first-round bye or a home playoff game, not their elimination. We lost one game on a last drive field goal, the other on a last play touchdown and extra point. If you lose your two toughest games, you place yourself at the mercy of a committee which has (ahem) other thing$ than mer¢y on their mind$.
Also, the sins of the (former) Athletic Director (AD) are visited upon his children. Years back, then-Notre Dame AD Swarbrick agreed to then-coach Brian Kelly’s request to schedule easier opponents in order to facilitate his chances of getting into the playoffs (Like that would have worked!). That schedule posed two problems: it started the season with two ranked opponents (nobody does this), and it left us with no solid opponent thereafter. Which meant even though the Irish railroaded the rest of the teams they played, the teams they played weren’t any good, degrading the claims of success.
Finally, the Irish and conferences are mortal enemies, and can never be anything else until the existing conference structure blows up. The Irish insist upon their independence, meaning they can make their own schedule, have their own TV rights deal, create their own rules (versus having extra conference rules), and keep all the money they earn in the playoffs. The very existence of a successful independent program is an affront to the notion of the conference system. When Oklahoma and Texas felt unappreciated in the Big-12, they talked about going independent before leaping to the SEC. When Michigan and USC recently got into a brawl with the B1G over a private equity funding scheme, they murmured about going independent. Conferences once were regional groupings of like-minded schools; now they are irrational agglomerations foraging for ever-more money (private equity? Seriously Big-10? Has anything ever been improved by making a deal with private equity?). The “Big 10” has eighteen members. The Atlantic Coast Conference has Stanford and California, notably lacking Atlantic access. And so it goes.
When push comes to shove in a playoff committee comprising conference representatives, the Irish have no representative. This year the ACC stumbled into a situation with no playoff contender from its championship game (more on that later). I would like to hear the committee assert that the fact an entire conference was about to be cut out of the playoff $ trough never came up for discussion. Right. Notre Dame has a business partnership with the ACC, whereby the Irish are in the conference for all sports except football, where they agree to schedule five ACC football team per year. This deal led some Notre Dame fans to believe the ACC was somehow friendly to the Irish. ACC schools constantly complain about the arrangement (Pat Narduzzi @ Pittsburgh being a fine example). They hate when the Irish win (see Lacrosse or Women’s B-ball), and don’t give ND credit when the ACC team’s stadium is full for a game against the Irish. Oh, and the conference got a better deal with the non-playoff bowl games because the Irish were in the mix. Here’s how the ACC acted this year: they replayed the Notre Dame loss to Miami on an endless loop on their cable channel. Their X account constantly brought up the game. Some business partners.
Don’t bet on the Irish-ACC agreement lasting more than next year. No, the Irish won’t join a conference: remember the bolded lead in? Notre Dame will find another home (like the Big East or the Atlantic 10) for its other sports and remain independent in football. Someday, the conferences will cease to exist for college football, probably by the creation of a Super League, which is something ND would join. Then the rest of college sports can return to regional conferences that make some sense.
Before I leave the Notre Dame section, I want to reiterate what I alluded to at the start. I can make a case that Miami deserved a spot because they had the same record as the Irish, similar schedules, and won head-to-head. I can argue Alabama played and beat more ranked teams. Both of them had horrible losses to bad teams, but one could argue the point. What I can’t forget (or forgive) is the committee placing the Irish ahead of those teams during the early rankings, then switching them at the end. Miami’s victory and Bama’s record were well-established when the first rankings came out. They didn’t matter, according to the committee. Until the end; then they mattered the most. Or something else was afoot.
Best joke of the weekend? Notre Dame had more rushing yardage than Alabama this week. Notre Dame didn’t play; Bama had -3.
Second, for the conferences. Your cherished championship games, which were million-dollar windfalls in the old days, are now an albatross around your necks. Get rid of them. What is the point of a game between Indiana and Ohio State where number one and number two switch places? What if Indiana had roughed up Ohio State badly, or maybe injured their star quarterback, costing the Buckeyes either a bye, a home playoff game, or even a playoff spot. For a felt banner? The ACC is the prophet here. Their selection process was so screwed up they ended up with their best team (Virginia, or UVa–what’s the “a” for?) playing a 7-5 opponent picked after a group “rock-paper-scissors” contest. Oh, and Duke (rock-paper-scissors champ) is now the ACC champion, and did not qualify for the playoffs, necessitating Miami getting a slot, or else the ACC went home hungry.
Next for the conferences is to schedule hard. The B1G has generally done this, but the SEC used to have three weak out-of-conference games followed by a game during the penultimate weekend of the season (the week before rivalry week), when they scheduled teams like Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind and Little Sister of the Poor. Seriously. I hear they are going to a nine-game conference schedule, which might alleviate this. No one got punished for playing a hard schedule: they either got punished for losing too much (sorry, Texas) or being independent (ND). And while we’re at it, stop adding teams. Conferences are so large now you can go multiple seasons without playing a conference opponent. Finally, drop the insistence on conference champions getting an automatic bid. Schedule hard, play the games, win them, and get a ranking in the top 12 to ensure you get into the playoffs. The conference champion auto-bids are how we get teams like Duke almost being in the playoffs.
Third, here are some lessons learned for college football writ large, or the minor gods who oversee it. Buy a vowel, get a clue, phone a friend in the NFL and figure out how to run a playoff. You would think no one has done this before. Last year’s trial run was atrocious, and little has been fixed. It’s really simple. Seed the teams in the first round, then re-seed after the first round results, so that the teams who receive an opening bye get an opponent proper to their seeding. Since you use a committee and don’t have the set divisions of the NFL, you have two options: either establish set, objective criteria for your rankings, or just televise the playoff committee meetings. They would be a ratings bonanza, and prevent any shenanigans (that’s Irish for “screw-job.”).
Next, do something about coaching changes. Coaches bailing on teams headed into the playoffs is an abomination. Come up with something imaginative, like a scholarship loss, or a recruit contact-ban, or an NIL limitation for coaches who do so. It will still happen, but it’s endemic right now. There will always be Lane Kiffens out there (“hey, look, a cute cheerleader . . . I mean team!”), but there has to be some way to limit the damage.
The transfer portal could have gone one of two ways: the rich getting richer, or greater parity. It seems the latter is the case, as we talk about teams like Texas Tech and Vanderbilt (the school, not the family), and that’s a good thing, even though I felt otherwise when it started. Now the sport needs to emphasize what made it great: rivalries. Find a way to reinstate or recover rivalry games, which are endangered by conference metastasizing. Here’s the thing: believe it or not, nobody uninvolved cares about Ohio State-Michigan, or Texas-Oklahoma. But the people who are involved care deeply: it’s life or death to them. Every school has a rival (or more than one). Make sure whatever changes we make to the sport encourage the continuation of rivalries.
Start planning for some type of super-conference, with tiers for relegation. The end of the existing conferences would enable the return of regional football, less expensive for the teams and fans, and better games (Hey I really enjoyed a 2245 kick-off time local for the epic Notre Dame-Stanford game!). It eases the path to objective playoff criteria (like the NFL uses). And I bet after one year of televising the playoff committee deliberations they’ll be begging to change the process. A two- or three-tiered league would allow for teams to rise or fall, encouraging fan interest even for a losing team (note: ever watch a Premier league match when relegation is at stake? It’s epic!)
Finally (no, really, I’m almost done!), since the NCAA is a dead-man walking, the conferences should band together and develop some criteria shoring up the idea that it’s college football, not semi-pro football. NIL money, the transfer portal, and other developments (like the player lawsuits seeking “employee” status) could fundamentally damage the sport. There has to be a way to maintain a link–however tenuous–to the notion the players are still students. I will leave it to creative minds to find the ways, but I do know this: there is a reason every semi-pro football league that has been tried in the States has failed miserably. If you want to watch pro-football, there is a very successful league for that. College football is different in kind–just ask the many successful college players and coaches who didn’t make it in “the league.” If you make the players into employees or mercenaries, the mystique of college football will carry over for a time, but it will eventually fail.
And then all I would have to write about would be politics!
Post Script: I lately noticed some sports talking-heads saying that Notre Dame’s decision to not play in the PopTarts bowl was “sour grapes” and hurt the players. Some Irish fans have claimed it was a middle-finger to ESPN, since our absence tanks the ratings. It was neither. The AD received the offer immediately after the announcement that ND was out of the playoff. He passed it to the coaches, who asked the team captains to poll the team on what they wanted to do: they chose not to play. Bowl games exist to (1) raise money for the town hosting, (2) raise money for the schools participating, (3) give the teams two extra weeks of practice, and (4) reward the players with a fun trip and some gifts. Notre Dame doesn’t need the money, and the players decided they didn’t want the practice or gifts. End of story. If you want to bash the Irish, find another angle.