I am still concerned that the media covering ND is inexcusably misleading ND fans as to the certainty of ND's inclusion into the Playoffs if it wins at USC at all, let alone if it is not a convincing victory.
If you read the excerpt below, the Committee clearly has grouped ND, Michigan and Georgia as comparable teams (as it has Alabama and Clemson). If the three win out they presumably will still be comparable, but Michigan and Georgia will be conference champions in which case, if the Protocol that governs the Committee is to be believed, ND cannot be included in the Playoff over Michigan or Georgia because ND will not be "unequivocally" better than either. Assuming Clemson wins out, it will come down to undefeated and independent ND vs 1-loss and conference non-champion Alabama.
The "ND will definitely be in if it wins at USC" crowd are assuming that conference championship is just another tie-breaking criterion, which is neither consistent with the Protocol on its face nor with Mullens qualifying the head-to-head comparison between ND and Michigan as still carrying weight "at this point." The assumption is, at best, questionable.
ROB MULLENS: Good evening, everyone. Week 4 is complete, and here are our rankings: Alabama is No. 1; Clemson is No. 2; Notre Dame is No. 3; Michigan is No. 4. Obviously nothing changed since last week. But that doesn't mean we didn't discuss or consider changes. We did. We talked about whether Alabama and Clemson should flip. Obviously we decided not to. We talked a long time about Notre Dame, Michigan and Georgia and where they should be ranked, especially after looking at their full resumes, including the one head-to-head, we ranked them as the way we did.
....
Q. You keep saying you were having trouble, a discussion about ranking 3, 4, 5. Seeing as Notre Dame has a win over No. 4 and over four top-25 teams, what's keeping them in that 3-to-5 range for you as opposed to being lumped in with 1 and 2?
ROB MULLENS: I want to be clear. We said there was a deep discussion on 3, 4, 5, and the head-to-head at this point still does carry the weight. That's why Notre Dame is 3, Michigan is 4, and Georgia is 5.
Link: College Football Playoff Media Conference, November 20, 2018