Let’s do an exercise for a moment: pretend Notre Dame and Miami were vying for a spot for the College Football Playoff. In our imagination, Notre Dame ranked top-10 in the NCAA in red zone scoring rate and points allowed per game, they had beaten Miami in South Bend, Miami had lost to Texas A&M early in the season on a last-minute touchdown, and six of Miami’s wins were against teams with a combined record of 20-52. 

I’m just guessing, but I don’t think we’d be having much of a conversation about who deserved to be in the playoff. I don’t think we’d be twisting and turning trying to figure out who the better team is. And in an era where we are encouraging teams to schedule competitive games, I certainly don’t think we’d be putting a ton of weight in Miami beating a bunch of teams with losing records. In fact, I don’t know that Miami would be a major part of the conversation, even if they passed the eye test.

Pundits and the Playoff Committee would be huffing and puffing about how Miami hadn’t played anyone. About how allowing Miami in would be setting precedent that devalues schedule strength.

We don’t have to imagine, except for one thing: the roles are reversed. Miami won the head-to-head matchup at home. Miami’s offense ranks eighth in red zone scoring and its defense allows the sixth-fewest points per game –– for reference, Notre Dame ranks 114th in red zone scoring and 11th in opponent points per game. Notre Dame lost to Texas A&M by a point in Week 2. And more than half of Notre Dame’s wins came against teams with a combined winning percentage of just .278.

And because the roles are reversed, because the facts point to Miami being the more deserving team, we’re having a different discussion. We’re hearing a lot about the eye test, which can be useful sometimes — particularly when evidence is lacking and we need something else, a deciding factor, to help us sift through the data to see what it says. The thing is, we have the evidence, the facts. We don’t need to include the subjective measurements of which of these teams looks better. We have almost all the data we can ask for. We even have a head-to-head matchup. Alone, head-to-head matchups can be overblown, but that’s not the case here — that Aug. 31 game fits into a larger picture. We have the data; it’s just telling us what we seemingly don’t want to hear. 

It seems like we are trying to bend the information to find a perspective for this debate that allows us to discount Miami. It’s like we know what the right thing to do is, but we’re trying to create an alternate reality so we can do the fun thing, the popular thing, the thing that our friends will talk about in the morning. Putting Notre Dame ahead of Miami would be the thing that adds shine to the playoff, but it’s not the right thing. Whether it’s subconscious or not, there’s part of us as college football enthusiasts, a piece of the conversation we feel but don’t want to talk about — because we want to “keep it about football,” even though that’s not the heart of this debate. If it was about football and football only, we’d be able to agree Miami deserves the spot over Notre Dame. But here we are, and the reality is, it has little to do with football but lots to do with culture, history, and even religion and politics.

That is, the allure of Notre Dame. They may not have the recent success, but they have a football program that’s a brand, a national brand independent from a specific conference and therefore independent from other programs, schools, and brands. It’s a brand visually defined in gold, a metaphor in and of itself, and emboldened by academic prowess, legendary coaches like Lou Holtz, and national title after national title. It’s a brand anchored by Touchdown Jesus, a mural mid-campus of Christ raising both arms as if He’s signaling a touchdown. It’s a brand that has been pushed forward in recent years with the program’s TV deal with NBC — the deal has put the Irish on the national stage and modernized the program just enough to lift it even closer to college football royalty while letting that historic luster remain. 

When we combine that brand with a clearly good football team, we get a case of benefit of the doubt. The Committee knows that a playoff with Notre Dame probably gets higher ratings, but I think it’s more than that. Notre Dame is college football; it exemplifies history, tradition, success, passion among fans in its unique way, but when we zoom out, those are the elements that make college football different. And even though we don’t always see it, it is precisely those things that give us an affinity for the Irish. And I expect that affinity to give Notre Dame the edge over Miami if there’s even a small discussion of which one belongs.