Notre Dame moved to 8-0 on Saturday with their 45-31 win over Boston College, the third time Brian Kelly has had a team start a season with eight straight victories in his now 11 years with the Irish.
After the game Kelly began the politicking that’ll come into play for Notre Dame to make the College Football Playoff if they don’t finish the regular season unbeaten.
“We’ve already played a Big Ten schedule,” Kelly said after the game. “We’ve completed eight games, and that’s clearly more than the Pac-12 will play and it takes a lot. Our team was tired tonight and you could see that they were, especially on defense, because it requires a lot of mental energy.
Certainly, the physicality of playing a lot of games, that takes its toll, because we’re testing. We tested four times this week, the training room and we played a double overtime game and those kids, they probably didn’t get to bed till four o’clock in the morning.”
If you’re unaware this is how college football works. If Notre Dame wins out this regular season they’re easily a College Football Playoff team, but as much as we’d all like them to be even with a loss at any point, you can bet your bottom dollar that there would be plenty of debate nationally about whether or not the Irish belong.
Better to get ahead of it and start making your case now then to be playing from behind later, even if the Pac-12 champion will only have played seven games and Ohio State very possibly will have only played eight.
That all said, just keep winning, baby.