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O’Gara: Why most college football fans should be rooting for Texas A&M to beat Notre Dame
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Even if your blood is burnt orange, you should be rooting for Texas A&M on Saturday night.
I know, I know. Many people will view the Notre Dame-Texas A&M showdown, which will host College GameDay, as picking between the lesser of 2 evils. You might view it regionally. If you’re a native Midwesterner or someone who cries “SEC bias” at every turn, perhaps you’d like to see the Irish enter a raucous SEC venue and take care of business. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even if it’s wrong.
For an outside fan to think about Saturday night with anything but the 12-team Playoff in mind would be a mistake. That’s why most fans should be pulling for the Aggies. Why?
(Oh, real quick. Let’s not call it an “upset” either way because Notre Dame is the higher-ranked team, but A&M is a 3-point favorite, via DraftKings.)
The Irish might’ve gotten this treatment to a certain extent during the 4-team Playoff era, but that’ll be magnified with an expanded field. More teams in contention means that more teams will want to pick apart Notre Dame’s unique résumé. It’s a résumé that won’t include a conference championship. Because Miami overbooked its nonconference matchups and had to push its game against the Irish to 2025, it’s a résumé that might not include much meat on the bone.
Much will change, but for now, there might not be a whole lot of opportunities for headliner matchups. Here are Notre Dame’s games against preseason AP Top 25 teams:
- Aug. 31 at No. 20 Texas A&M
- Nov. 7 vs. No. 10 Florida State (0-1)
- No. 30 at No. 23 USC
To recap, the Irish won’t face another preseason AP Top 25 team until November, and that’s against an FSU team that’s already 0-1 heading into Week 1. And the other is against a 7-win USC squad at the end of its first season in the Big Ten, which could be much different than the squad that takes the field against LSU on Sunday night.
Yes, Notre Dame’s path to the 12-team Playoff is clear, yet it only exists via the at-large path. Yes, it’ll be the subject of scrutiny for “Core 4” teams from coast to coast.
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Picture a 9-3 Oklahoma and a 10-2 Notre Dame. The former has 6 preseason AP Top 25 teams on its schedule. Shoot, the Sooners face as many preseason AP Top 25 teams in the final 3 weeks of the regular season as Notre Dame will face all year. Those rankings aren’t set in stone, but what isn’t changing? Notre Dame is a multi-time Playoff participant as a national brand in the sport. Sure, the Irish were outscored a combined 61-17 by the eventual national champs, but that’s a bit different than discussing whether, say, SMU will get the benefit of the doubt from the selection committee.
(After that opening weekend showing against Nevada, I’d say SMU has more important things to worry about than the Playoff. I just chose a team in Year 1 in a “Core 4” conference. And yes, it’s “Core 4” and not Power 5.)
It won’t matter to the selection committee that Notre Dame’s historical résumé includes a 3-23 mark vs. AP Top 5 teams in the past 25 seasons, and perhaps it shouldn’t. After all, this year is all that should be taken into account. At least in theory, that’s how it should line up. In actuality, Notre Dame could go 10-2 and hover around the top 10 all year. That’s the worst-case scenario for other Playoff contenders.
There are 7 at-large berths — don’t forget that the highest-ranked Group of 5 conference champ also gets an auto-bid — up for grabs. That might seem like a lot in this new format, but remember that in all likelihood, a team that loses the Big Ten or SEC Championship also is making the field. If Notre Dame is locked into a spot as an idle team during conference championship weekend, that number drops from 7 to 4 at-large berths in a hurry.
See what I’m saying?
Perhaps I’ve danced around the other more direct angle of rooting for A&M — doesn’t beating Notre Dame propel the Aggies into Playoff contention and thus make it useless for the rest of the country to pull for a specific result?
For now, yes. But remember that Saturday will be A&M’s first game vs. 4 preseason top-15 squads. Also remember that the Aggies haven’t won a true road game since Oct. 16, 2021. Their preseason odds of navigating that schedule to get to 9-3 or 10-2 are less likely than Notre Dame’s path to 10-2. FanDuel, for instance, put the Aggies’ over/under win total at 8.5. A&M hit 9 regular-season wins twice in the 21st century. A Week 1 win doesn’t change that.
If the Aggies win, that would put a damage Notre Dame’s chances, especially if A&M ends up being a middle-of-the-pack SEC team. That helps those potential 9-3 SEC teams against a 10-2 Notre Dame. While the selection committee put the Irish into the 4-team field twice, those were also after undefeated regular seasons (the 2020 squad didn’t lose until the Clemson rematch in the ACC Championship). Go figure that it was a 1-loss A&M team that didn’t get the benefit of the doubt against the ACC Championship-losing Irish for the final spot in the 2020 Playoff. That was also a much different set of circumstances with conference-only schedules during the COVID season.
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These are much different circumstances during the 12-team Playoff era. A more cerebral approach to the sport is needed. It’s no longer about simply “taking care of our own business and letting everything else fall into place.” These arguments have significance now.
The only non-Notre Dame fans who should be rooting for the Irish are fans of teams on that upcoming schedule. Then again, the only “Core 4” bowl teams that it will face after A&M are Louisville, Georgia Tech, Florida State and USC. No offense to other 2024 Notre Dame opponents like the service academies, the MAC schools, Stanford, Purdue and Virginia, but the 12-team Playoff might not be that inclusive.
It figures to include a program like Texas, which under normal circumstances, would probably would rather swim to Australia than willingly root for A&M to win in anything, especially football. But beyond just the desire to have a résumé-boosting win on the table in the regular-season finale, the Longhorns should be rooting against anyone who can steal an at-large bid. That’s Notre Dame.
All eyes will be on Kyle Field on Saturday night. Whether they have maroon blood or not, the 12th Man should be represented from coast to coast.
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Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
