On Tuesday, the College Football Playoff officially approved its new 12-team format that will include automatic bids for the four highest-ranked conference champions. Those four conference champions will also receive the four highest seeds in the field and a first-round bye. And that’s a problem for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
As sports analyst Joe Pompliano points out, since Notre Dame is an independent team that is not a part of any conference, they will be ineligible for one of the playoff’s top four seeds even if they are the No. 1 team in the country because they will never be a conference champion.
“The new College Football Playoff will put the 4 highest ranked conference champions as seeds 1 through 4. That means that even if Notre Dame is the #1 ranked team in the country, they would get the #5 seed, requiring them to win 4 straight games to win a title. That’s brutal,” Pompliano said in a post on X, the social media website that was formerly known as Twitter.
No, brutal is having to potentially play USC or Washington or Oregon or Ohio State again in a B1G title game just to make the CFP while Notre Dame rests at home.
It's time to do away with conference title games. https://t.co/KAzRQPmzBE
— M Go Humor (@MGoHumor) February 20, 2024
Notre Dame’s football team has fought to remain independent and has resisted joining a conference throughout its history. However, Notre Dame does play five games a year against opponents from the ACC and is a member of the conference for all other sports besides ice hockey.