Will Notre Dame Play Clemson Three Times?

Notre Dame played an opponent twice in the same season fairly early on, when they played Michigan on back-to-back days in April during Notre Dame’s second year of football in 1888.

Yet will Notre Dame play Clemson three times in the 2020 season?

Already the Fighting Irish and the Tigers are on a rematch, meeting up in the ACC Championship Game thanks to Notre Dame agreeing to spend one year in full-blown ACC conference play.  The Irish, of course, already beat Clemson in an early November regular season game, a double-overtime thriller at Notre Dame.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that, if #3 Clemson, with several key starters returning, manages to upset undefeated #2 Notre Dame at the ACC championship neutral site in Charlotte, N.C., a one-loss Notre Dame would still be invited to the would-be College Football Playoff.  A victorious one-loss Clemson also would be invited, having just defeated a top-2 opponent.

So, in that case, Notre Dame and Clemson could meet a third time on the season, either in the semifinal or in the national championship game itself.

However, there already are voices clamoring that, if Notre Dame wins again, a two-loss Clemson should not be allowed to become the first two-loss team invited to the still quite-young playoff arrangement.

Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made that, because of the unique way that college football is set up, Clemson should still be invited to the playoff, as long as they keep it close in the ACC title game.

In that event, even with two losses, Clemson should still be considered a one-loss team because both losses would be to just one team, the same team, an undefeated top-2 opponent.

Moreover, if Notre Dame beats Clemson again, Notre Dame clearly should be #1, with a stronger season over Alabama, even if Alabama manages to hold off a reeling multiple-loss Florida in the SEC title game.

In college football, while wins and losses are important, they also get regarded as “yardsticks” defining how the relevant teams compare.  Even if Clemson picks up a second loss, that does nothing to change the yardstick comparison, to indicate where Clemson stands in the “pecking order” because it was just one elite, top team that would have beaten them.

Meanwhile, one-loss Texas A&M got blown out by more than four touchdowns in their loss to Alabama earlier in the year.  Cincinnati would have an argument that, if they go undefeated, they deserve an invitation. But the ridiculous effort by the would-be playoff rankings to keep Cincinnati below Texas A&M implies that there is little rationale to put the Bearcats ahead of the Tigers, within the distorted world view of the somewhat dubiously ad hoc committee responsible for the rankings and invitations.

Another question is whether Brian Kelly and Notre Dame might follow through on their raising the prospect of declining a playoff invitation if families are not allowed at the semifinals or final.

To be truthful, Notre Dame should sit out the playoff just because of the coercive measure of blacking out the games on actual broadcast television, in favor of trying to force viewers to get cable television or, even worse, the pseudo-premium packages that ESPN has now retreated into.

Notre Dame really should look into setting up their own bowl games, heading forward at least, and make sure that the game are broadcast on actual broadcast television.

BYU once won a modern era national championship in the Holiday Bowl.

The would-be playoff already has seen its legitimacy reduced, just as the would-be BCS title game had its own legitimacy questioned.  Already, Central Florida won a de facto national championship on the field after being left out of a playoff.  Several years ago, an Alabama team that lost late in the year and did not even make it into their own conference title game was invited to the playoff, and awarded a supposed national title, even as an undefeated Central Florida beat an Auburn team that, itself, had beaten Alabama not long before the playoff shenanigans.