Well, two consecutive years, Notre Dame has had to win the final 10 games of its regular season to keep alive its playoff hopes.

The Irish did just that Saturday night into Sunday morning with a 49 to 20 win at Stanford.

It prompted some people to hold their breaths.

It's prompted an exhale.

And ultimately now it prompts at least a week of a little bit more held breath. I am John Bryce of FootballScoop.com and Irish Illustrated. He is Drew Hunger Strike, Mentock of Irish Illustrated as well. And our producer's Tom's Willer. This is Irish Illustrated's overtime live, the morning after Stanford.

Drew, your initial thoughts on the game and the exhalation temporary because Jeremiah Love is A-OK.

And now back on again as Notre Dame prepares to hold its breath over the final week of college football's regular season and conference championship games.

Yes, I think just that the performance on the field was even more dominant than the 49 to 20 score would

indicate. I mean, Notre Dame was up, as most people saw, 35 to 3 at half, only give up 90 yards

in the first half and had 319 yards on offense so just really

dominant i think marcus freeman even touched on it after the game that maybe they lot up again

because they did leave their defensive starters out there maybe a little longer than you would

have thought i think whether he would like to admit it or not Marcus Freeman is aware of

style of points matter and things like that. But Notre Dame had this game handily taken care of,

and it'll be curious how that kind of stuff is looked at by the committee. It might help.

I don't know if all the members were staying up late, but it was the only game really to watch last night.

So I'd be kind of curious how that's perceived because it was a thorough beat down for most of the game,

even if the final score might look closer than I believe it was 42 to 7 that Miami beat Stanford by a few weeks ago.

Yeah, good points there.

You wonder how much of the country

saw Notre Dame until the very end. And I would imagine quite a few televisions were flipped

off when it was 35 to 3 at the half or early into the third quarter when it was still also

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