One of the most frustrating things about the people who lecture Notre Dame to “join a conference” because their schedule is considered too light is that they tend to let the narrative get ahead of the real story. Plenty of conference teams have cupcake-filled schedules. One big case in point is the Miami Hurricanes.
Going all the way back to January, the talk about the Fighting Irish facing off against the Hurricanes has been that Marcus Freeman’s squad needs to win the game in order to go to the College Football Playoff. The argument was, and continues to be, that Notre Dame’s schedule is too weak to sustain even one loss. However, it’s clear the people making that argument haven’t bothered to look at the Hurricanes’ schedule. In a just world, they’d be far more desperate to come away with a victory in South Bend on November 7.
Including Miami, Notre Dame has two other preseason AP Top 25 teams on its schedule (No. 14 BYU and No. 19 SMU). On the flip side, the Hurricanes’ only contest against teams that were ranked before the season is that late-fall game against the Golden Domers.
Notre Dame also doesn’t have an FCS on the schedule, while Miami faces off against Florida A&M next week. The Hurricanes have Central Michigan later in the season, while the Irish have Navy.
Notre Dame football faces a CFP schedule standard conference teams routinely avoid
There’s also an argument that Mario Cristobal’s team gets to avoid the two other ACC champion-level teams, as they’ll play neither SMU nor Virginia in the regular season. Meanwhile, Notre Dame has both Miami and SMU on its ACC schedule.
It’s not just the ‘Canes either. Several other Power 4 teams have extremely weak schedules precisely because they are in a conference. Plenty has been made of Texas Tech’s ridiculously easy slate. The Red Raiders face exactly one pre-season AP Top 25 opponent: No. 23 Houston. The Cougars didn’t look much like a squad that will be ranked for very long, as they struggled against a rebuilding Oregon State.
Speaking of SMU, BYU, and Houston, all three teams have fewer preseason AP Top 25 teams on their schedule than the Fighting Irish (one, two, and two, respectively). Should the Mustangs and Cougars lose to Freeman’s squad, neither program will be out of the running for the College Football Playoff as long as they can take care of business in their conferences.
And yet, critics constantly cry about how Notre Dame gets special treatment. College football’s dirty little secret is that teams protected by conference play get far more special treatment, especially because they tend to get analysts and voters to look the other way while they pad their schedule with cupcakes.
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