@NDsidBertschy: Among Bama, CU, ND, Ga, OU and OSU, the Irish are no worse than 3rd in FBS wins (12), Power-5 wins (10), AP top-25 wins (4), current CFP top-25 wins (3), road/neutral wins (6) and Power-5 winning record wins (5).
And, the Irish needed just 12 games to do it.
#BertschyBits
"Miles traveled: Ala. 3,878, GA 4,489 ND 12,551."
How many "conference" teams have to travel to NYC for one of their "home" games? How many conference teams have to fly to San Diego one week, travel to Chicago the next week, have the one real home game of their last five, fly to New York the next week, then fly to Los Angeles the final week? How many play two B1G teams, two PAC 12 teams, one SEC team, 5 ACC teams, and NO FCS teams?
Not many.
They have defeated 3 of the then current AP top 21 and final playoff committee's top 22 and it isn't their fault Florida State and USC happen to have two horrible head coaches who don't know what to do with all the talent they have recruited.
The cost to ND for joining the ACC in every sport except football (independent) and hockey (Big 10) is that they had to eliminate annual games against traditional rivals Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue in order to play 5-6 ACC games per year. They now ony can schedule those three teams intermittantly. Only Pitt and BC were tradional rivals and they can't play them every year now but can still schedule them every 3 years. Getting Clemson and Florida State on the rotation schedule is a good tradeoff.
The cost to also join ACC in football full time instead of what they have now would basically have been to eliminate USC, Stanford and probably Navy from the annual schedule (at least 2 of those 3) which they hopefully will never do. They will also continue to make a Thanksgiving trip to Cali every year, alternating home & home games with USC and Stanford.