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Oklahoma loses one more game. If Alabama wins out, there will be no second SEC win with one loss. Oklahoma would have to lose at least one game also. I don't see any other one loss team surpassing the Irish.

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if ND continues to fail the "eye test." Those 3 would have conference championships. Remember, in 2015 ND dropped out of the top 4 despite beating BC because it failed the eye test.

Kelly has deliberatively established a self-fulfilling culture of winning is good enough, even if it is only by 1 point, because winning is hard, the other teams have coaches who want to win too, .... (As opposed to Saban for whom you can't call a 30-point win against an SEC opponent a win if the defense didn't play well.) I get that when having to dig the program out of the hole he inherited ... and the one he subsequently redug himself ... that culture may have been advantageous with respect to morale and confidence both within and around the program, but that time has passed. Expect and prepare for the unexpected and dominate inferior opponents or you don't belong in the playoffs. One, maybe two games where the team doesn't have it or the coaching staff gets caught off guard, but ND has 3 struggles at home against teams a championship team would be expected to dominate. And even when it had large margins of victory, at points in the game ND looked clueless; for example, the 2nd quarter against VT and coming out like the Keystone Cops on defense in the 2nd half against Navy after looking like an actual championship contender in the 1st half.

If ND doesn't dominate its remaining opponents, I could understand the Committee dropping ND out of the top 4. I think the Committee told ND last night, no more mulligans. Make us believe you belong.

Here we would be undefeated and have beaten Michigan and they would have lost to us.

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Irrelevant. Beat Northwestern !

They will definitely finish ahead of Michigan and likely ahead of Alabama and Oklahoma.

Bama losses to LSU and crushes everyone after that, I see a one loss UGA or LSU and a one loss Bama in over ND. Not fair but look at the selection committee, not likely many old timers that remember when ND didn't crap the bed.

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Real question is who do they put in out of: Bama (1 loss to a top 4/non-champ), michigan (1 loss to a top 4/ champ), or OU (1 loss to a no-top 4/ champ).

I know who I think would be most deserving based on their 'moving goal post' precepts, but I know that isn't actually the best team and likely not who they would pick.

It would be LSU #1, Clemson#2, ND #3, and Bama #4... unless their SEC bias is so strong they specifically want to see another all SEC title games, then they'd switch ND and Bama.

They lost their great running back from last year too. We would handle them again.

We won a close game off a once in a lifetime type play, but we won, and it was a tightly contested game before that...I think if we play them this year in neutral territory, it would be that same type of who makes that one play to pull it out type of game.

And no, they shouldn't be ranked ahead of us, unless they beat Bama of course.

That said, if ND had a string of brutal looking wins (See BC at Fenway in 2015) , I could see this committee putting Oklahoma and Kyler Murray in ahead of ND. (They might even try it with Michigan, but I doubt it. Head-to-head and loss differential being too much.)

They've telegraphed their view a bit with the LSU placement. ND is not entirely protected merely by being undefeated.

while feeling strongly that they will lose to Alabama this weekend.

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The conspiracy theorists think there is an SEC bias now.....there'd be an uproar if an undefeated ND was left out, and 2-3 SEC team were included .

Exactly......

in the SEC Championship game thus giving somebody a second loss?

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