UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

... their argument (which, incidentally, is also bs) is that Notre Dame doesn't have to 'run the gauntlet' of a conference schedule. When you have to play teams year after year (this bs argument goes), teams know one another's tendencies and rivalries are forged and even bottom-tier teams become difficult to beat week after week. The reality is—particularly in the era of expansion where conferences have 16 teams and therefore only play perhaps one or two teams every season given an 8/9-game conference slate—that pretty much every strong CFP contender plays around 2-4 (maybe 5) difficult games, 2-4 cupcake matchups, and 4-6 middle-of-the-road games. It's true for teams in the P4 conferences and it's true for ND.