Notre Dame came out of Monday’s College Football Playoff news looking like the biggest winner in the room.
ESPN and the CFP announced a new agreement that will expand the playoff to 24 teams starting next year, and one of the biggest changes is what disappeared: the special carve-out that exists only this season for the Fighting Irish. Under the current setup, if Notre Dame is ranked No. 12, no team can jump it. That protection is gone in the new format.
The expanded field will include automatic bids for the Power 4, or Autonomy 4, conference champions, though how those champions will be determined is still undecided. The highest-ranked Group of 6 team will also get in automatically, and the remaining 19 spots will be at-large bids. Notre Dame is part of that at-large group, and the Irish would have made the playoff last year if the field had already been 24 teams.
For anyone dismissing the new format as an “everyone gets a participation trophy” setup, Notre Dame may be the program that benefits most.
One obvious advantage is simple math. The Irish won’t have to panic nearly as much if they take two losses in the regular season, and even three might not completely bury them.
Saturday night’s game against Miami could have been season-defining if Notre Dame had lost. Instead, the expanded bracket means they would likely still be in the mix even if they were sitting at No. 11 in the first CFP Poll.
A loss to the No. 1 team in the country wouldn’t send them tumbling 14 spots.
The other major win for Notre Dame comes in the new scheduling standards attached to the agreement between the CFP and ESPN. The language reads:
“Autonomy 4 Conference (A4) Scheduling Standards - Each A4 institution will be expected to play at least 10 qualifying regular season games consisting of the following:
Conference games: Non-conference games versus A4 conference opponents and Notre Dame.”
That puts pressure on schools that have tried to avoid the Irish. Programs such as USC, which backed out of a series against Notre Dame because they wanted to soften their schedule, now have to line up at least one A4 non-conference opponent. The Trojans may try to find the weakest Big 12 or ACC team available, but if they can’t, they may end up back at Marcus Freeman and company.
It also means the schools that talked about boycotting Notre Dame won’t have the option of ducking the Irish if they want to stay in the playoff hunt.
In Other News...
Notre Dame Just Lost A Huge 2031 Matchup At The Worst Time
A future trip to Gainesville had been on Notre Dames calendar for years, but that plan is gone now after Florida canceled the home-and-home series scheduled for 2031 and 2032. The move comes with the SECs shift to nine conference games, which gave the Gators a contractual out and reshaped a matchup that would have been one of the more attractive nonconference dates on the Irish schedule.
Notre Dame has already filled the opening by lining up Washington for a home-and-home series beginning in 2031, keeping the long-range slate moving even as the search for additional Autonomy 4 opponents continues. For a program that has to plan years ahead to maintain the kind of schedule it wants, the change is a reminder that even the biggest future games can disappear quickly when conference realignment and scheduling rules collide. [Read more 🡒]
Notre Dame May Have Found A Dangerous New Role For Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa
Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asas day against Miami looked like more than just a breakout moment in the box score. He turned in the first sack by a Notre Dame linebacker this season, but the bigger development may have been how the Irish deployed him in the middle of the defense, where he handled the sideline communication duties and stayed on the field for a career-high 70 snaps.
For Notre Dame, that kind of workload matters because it came in a game where the defense was dictating terms from start to finish. The Irish generated 32 total pressures on Miami quarterback Darian Mensah and kept him from finding much rhythm, with Viliamu-Asa emerging as part of the front-line answer in a role that could give this defense a different edge as the season moves on. [Read more 🡒]
Notre Dame Just Got Dragged Into ESPNs Latest CFP Ranking Debate
Stephen A. Smiths latest take on the College Football Playoff rankings stirred up the usual noise, but it also pulled Notre Dame back into a familiar conversation about how teams are judged when the schedule debate gets loud. Smith questioned whether Utah belonged at No. 2, raised doubts about the quality of its wins and argued Alabama should be inside the top five, which quickly set off a wave of reaction across social media and the broader college football crowd.
For Notre Dame fans, the part that stood out was how quickly the comparison game started. Critics of Smiths view pointed to Utah and Notre Dame in the same breath, using the Irish schedule as part of the argument over perceived bias in ESPNs coverage and ranking discourse. It is the kind of debate that never really goes away in November, especially when the rankings are still fluid and every talking point seems to come with an agenda attached. [Read more 🡒]