Miami is No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings and 8-0. Notre Dame is No. 11, 7-1, and hasn’t beaten a single team in the committee’s Top 25. And Notre Dame is a 7.5-point favorite Saturday night in South Bend.
Read that again. The No. 1 team in the country is getting more than a touchdown.
The résumés, side by side
- Miami (8-0): won at Wake Forest 33-20, and Wake is No. 16 in the CFP at 7-1. Won at Clemson 41-13. Beat Florida State 43-35 and won at North Carolina 38-35, so it hasn’t all been easy.
- Notre Dame (7-1): beat Wisconsin, Rice, Michigan State, Purdue, North Carolina, Stanford and Navy. Those seven teams are a combined 21-36, and Wisconsin (5-3) is the only one with a winning record. The one game against a ranked team? A 28-24 loss to BYU, now No. 9.
- The polls can’t agree either: the AP has Notre Dame No. 4. The committee has the Irish No. 11.
Here’s what I think is going on. Vegas isn’t grading résumés. It’s pricing a home game at Notre Dame Stadium, a roster full of blue-chip recruits and a Miami team that let Florida State and North Carolina hang around. That’s fair. Vegas usually knows something.
But I’m a résumé guy. Who have you beaten? Miami has a road win over a 7-1 team. Notre Dame has a bunch of wins over teams that won’t go bowling. If the Canes win Saturday, nobody gets to call it an upset. It’ll be the No. 1 team doing what No. 1 teams do.
And if Notre Dame rolls by two touchdowns, I’ll be the first to say the Irish were better than the schedule let them show. That’s the beauty of Saturday. Somebody’s getting proven wrong.
Kickoff is 6:30 p.m. Central on NBC. Same night Kentucky comes to Knoxville at 5:15. Hope you’ve got two TVs.
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Jeremy Durham is a sports columnist for TriStar Daily and the founder of Five and a Fade.
