A breakthrough year is coming

Notre Dame Preview 2024
Offensive Preview: Irish O's take flight
Defence preview: Ireland are once again the best team in the country
Special teams preview: Kicker has to be successful
Keys of the season: top players, matches and transfers
Wins Predictions: What to expect this season

The world of college sports is evolving, and Notre Dame's football team has the potential to benefit, improve and even dominate.

Universities are uniquely positioned to take advantage of changing rules and regulations, even if they are loose, which creates the potential to generate more funding, attract better talent, and become even bigger universities. have In the university landscape Owner.

Is your school wealthy? Does it have a good media deal that gives it the potential to get even better?

Much better? (We'll save that for another day.)

Do you have a fanbase and alumni with the will and means to do whatever it takes, a situation that is already so great that with just one or two tweaks you could reach a whole new VIP lounge level?

As for Notre Dame, I'm all for it and they have the coach and momentum to get there, if not now, then soon.

But rather than forgetting about the tedious administrative tasks and all the policy changes and figuring out how to distribute vast amounts of revenue, a more immediately tangible benefit to Notre Dame would be a change to the College Football Playoff.

There has been one bizarre upset in the CFP's decade – the TCU-Michigan game two seasons ago – and even then, the SEC attended a breakfast meeting when it came time to decide the national champion.

While just making it to a four-team tournament has been an honor in itself over the past decade, the CFP isn't the NCAA Tournament or playoffs in other sports: You can't make a 3-point shot make you swell, a goalie stand on end and overcome a talent gap with a stellar pitching performance.

In a four-team College Football Playoff, sure, they could have beaten Alabama, Ohio State or Clemson in the right year, but that means they would have had to beat either Alabama, Ohio State or Clemson in 2019 or Louisiana State in 2023 to win the national title.

Notre Dame has been cutting costs for the past decade or so, but it's come to light just how far it has drifted from being a true rock and roller.

Alabama 31, Notre Dame 14. The College Football Playoff semifinals of the 2020 season weren't that close.

At the end of the 2018 season, Clemson was 30, Notre Dame was 3. No, it really, really wasn't that close. Some people will try to argue with me about this.

In the BCS Championship to close out 2012, Alabama won by 42, Notre Dame by 14. It really wasn't that close.

But a 12-team playoff would be different.

A longer playoff run means more opportunities for injuries and for top players to succumb to NFL syndrome, and a stretch well into late January increases the chances of strange events happening.

And there's another big thing that could happen, and this has to do with new changes and rules: Notre Dame, under Marcus Freeman's direction, could produce a monster like Michigan in 2023, Georgia in 2022, or a couple of Alabama teams, or Clemson in 2016.

At the very least, Notre Dame remains in a position to succeed after eight double-digit win seasons in the past 12 years, plus two nine-win seasons, with only one of those being a true dud.

The 2021 team would have played in the expanded CFP. The 2019 team would have played there, along with the 2014 and 2017 teams. There would have been six expanded playoff appearances in the past decade, closer to seven.

Keep winning, keep competing regularly in this new College Football Playoff, keep hanging in there, eventually one of these Irish teams will break through and do well in late December and into January.

Maybe the 2024 Notre Dame Fighting Irish will make it happen.