Why Notre Dame’s stunning loss means virtually nothing in this new College Football Playoff era

Way back in the halcyon days of last year, the sheer amount of upsets sustained by potential College Football Playoff programs over the past couple of weeks would have sent the intelligentsia into a tailspin.

We are talking labored breathing, doubled-handed gesticulating, and lots and lots of fancy chyron screens over half-hollered statements about a new wave of teams taking over from the old guard.

But in this new, 12-berth CFP era, all these early upsets mean … well … pretty much nothing.

For now.

With the notable exception of the absolute implosion of the Florida State Seminoles, just about every team that has been dinged with an early loss could still be slotted into one of the coveted Playoff spots come December.

And boy, are we here for it.

Your mileage may vary with this, of course. You likely know someone who still longs for the actual long-ago where a bunch of writers like moi voted to decide who was the national champion – only after another set of well-fed/brightly blazered chaps determined who would be playing in the various postseason bowl games.

That seems like forever ago, well before we figured out that inventing computers was good for crunching algorithms to accent the bunch of writers and potentially create split champs. That wasn’t good enough for you mouth-breathers either… so ESPN threw up its collective hands and said “ah the heck with it, we will subsidize a new Playoff adventure. Happy now?”

And we were, until we weren’t.

Those same self-immolating Seminoles disproved a pretty good hypothesis last season simply by having the gall to be the fifth worthy team seeking an invitation to a 4-seat party. The current 12-team bracket was already in the works well before Florida State – undefeated and the ACC champs – got shuffled to the Orange Bowl and saw their reserves get destroyed by Georgia’s reserves.

So now there are 12 seats at the party, and that means getting beat in early September no longer means you’re relegated to playing out the string. Back in the day, 5th-ranked Notre Dame tumbling to a team like Northern Illinois would send shockwaves through the rest of the Top 25.

Now? Said Irish upset does create questions about just how good – or bad – Notre Dame is following Saturday’s 16-14 victory by the 28.5-point underdog Huskies. But losing to a MACtion team (and snapping the MAC’s 0-and-51 streak against Top 5 teams) simply won’t eliminate the Irish from CFP contention like it would have just 365 days prior.

And we are totally here for it.

Provided Notre Dame proves that Saturday’s loss was a fluke and not an actual symptom of FSU-Itis in South Bend, there is plenty of time and space for the Irish to get right and remain a contender. Part of this equation, naturally, is Notre Dame’s national cache – there are more sidewalk Irish alums than anywhere else in the country. But Marcus Freeman’s team plays 3 more current Top 25 teams, so Notre Dame could tread enough water to gain a 10-12 seed.

Trying to chart all this after Week 2 is pretty much impossible, and that’s why we are so here for it. You’d have to be toting around a doctorate in statistics to try and prognosticate who gets in and who is out (that list is limited to Florida State at this point …) and who will play who.

It won’t get any clearer in the next couple of weeks, no matter how many more top 10 teams like FSU and Notre Dame absorb upsets. Basically, upsets are far less upsetting than they have been in any previous point in college football history.

Lose a shocker to the Wichita State Shockers? No problem – you’re still in contention!

LSU takes an unexpected L? Simmer down, Tigers, you play in the SEC – which the punditry thinks will get maybe half of the CFP slots anyway!

This is a new era in college football, and we are seeing it play out in real time. Due to the evolving economics of college football, losses cost less than ever. And now, this generation of athletes who grew up with participation trophies are vying for the purest form of football democracy – despite playing darn near an NFL-level amount of games before we finally crown a winner.

Chaos? Nah. It’s only Week 2. We have a long, long way to go.

And we are totally here for it.

David Wasson

An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.