The Notre Dame Fighting Irish have been one of the bubble teams for the College Football Playoff this season, as they have been one of the premier teams in the sport. They have a 9-2 record heading into Week 14 and are the ninth-ranked program. Their hopes of getting back to the national championship game is a bit tougher as they obviously cannot win a conference championship for one of the five automatic bids.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s CFP chances and discuss exactly why they should be in this season.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish Should Make the College Football Playoff
The Fighting Irish Battled Through Adversity
While the College Football Playoff Selection Committee has a lot of discussions regarding the order of the teams in the CFP, the Fighting Irish have shown the ability to overcome adversity into success. The team started with an 0-2 record after losing games at the Miami Hurricanes and at home against the Texas A&M Aggies.
If you want to have the argument about “good losses”, it is difficult to find a better two losses than these teams, who entered the final week of the regular season in contention for their respective conference championships. Since the two losses, Notre Dame turned the corner and ran the table, including wins against two teams that were ranked at the time (USC and Pittsburgh).
Battling through the challenges after making the national championship game last season shows exactly why they have done enough to make the College Football Playoff.
The Jeremiyah Love Effect
Having a player in the Heisman Trophy conversation has seemed to be a way to put that team in contention for the national championship. Junior running back Jeremiyah Love is expected to get the invite next week to New York City as a Heisman Finalist and that should prove things are trending in the right direction for Notre Dame.
Love has been one of the leaders in college football as he entered Week 14 with 185 rushing attempts for 1,306 yards (7.1 yards per carry) and 17 rushing touchdowns while adding 26 receptions for 274 yards (10.5 yards per catch) and three touchdown grabs. The committee is still human, so seeing an impactful player on a winning team could simply be enough to put them over the hump.
Who can arguably jump them?
When looking at the Week 14 results before Notre Dame gets their game started against a lowly Stanford Cardinal program, there is not many teams who did enough this week to elevate themselves. Let’s take at some teams that were on the cusp of surpassing them in the latest CFP rankings.
The Michigan Wolverines lost at home 27-9 against the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Tennessee Volunteers lost at home 45-24 to the Vanderbilt Commodores. With the Texas Longhorns having three losses on the year, the Oklahoma Sooners barely defeating an unranked LSU Tigers, and the Alabama Crimson Tide in a tight matchup against the Auburn Tigers, it will be tough to have too many teams ahead of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Notre Dame has one of the top programs in terms of points scored and points allowed per game. With the experience and championship-level schedule, it is going to be a significantly tough conversation by the College Football Playoff Selection Committee if they were to keep the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on the outside of the College Football Playoff.
Jeremiyah Love Sets Notre Dame Record in Week 14 vs. Stanford
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