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The Shamrock: A show about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish

What does playoff expansion mean for Notre Dame?

The Shamrock: A show about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish

The Athletic

Sports News, Sports, News, Football

4.8524 Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2021

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pete and Matt discuss college playoff expansion and its impact on Notre Dame. Pete recaps his discussion with head coach Brian Kelly about roster management, recruiting and more.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome to the next episode of the Shamrock.

0:17.8

I'm Pete Sampson, joined by Matt Fortuna.

0:19.9

We've both taken a little bit of

0:21.3

vacation since our last episode while I was in Mexico. Absolutely nothing happened. Then Matt

0:26.4

goes to San Diego and there's a new college football playoff. So congratulations, Matt, on

0:30.5

being out of town as our entire sport has blown up. First vacation in well over a year.

0:37.9

Well, my last vacation was January 2020, which I remember specifically because I was in

0:41.6

Southern California when Kobe Bryant died and I'm thinking, geez, like all the things

0:46.8

that happen when I'm in Southern California trying to turn it off for a bit.

0:50.1

And then you go away in the middle of June, which historically has been a pretty quiet time of the year for college football. And this year isn't for recruiting reasons. And now with the playoff, it's, it's, you know, these guys are all meeting in Chicago here. I'm going to see them later this week. All the commissioners to talk about this. I don't know what else there is to talk about because they decided to rush this thing up a week in advance,

1:27.8

which was a pleasant surprise, and we will talk plenty about that. But I, for one, I'm very happy to see the way this thing has played out. Yeah, I am too. We'll get into sort of Notre Dame's roster moves, more grad transfer than recruiting, but a little bit of that too. But, I mean, the playoff is everything, right like that's i i thought nicole arbac had a good story today just about is it too much of a too much of everything in

1:32.6

it from a media perspective um i like matt browns sort of take on just how historically

1:39.4

oxygen sucking alabama and clemson are today as top five teams.

1:44.5

It is unprecedented that you would have two teams running on parallel tracks like this at the same time.

1:52.2

But, I mean, as far as Notre Dame goes, I thought that the reaction to it, I mean, my initial one was like, the first one was the buy and not getting that.

2:03.2

You're like, okay, that's a little bit uncomfortable.

2:05.2

I'd probably need to take a second to think through all the ins and out of this.

2:09.3

But, I mean, overall, as I wrote, like, Notre Dame wins more in this than they lose,

2:16.5

which isn't to say they won everything and lost nothing.

2:20.1

I mean, overall, this is a net positive clearly for Notre Dame, but that doesn't mean it's

2:25.5

100% moving in a good way if you're Notre Dame football.

2:30.9

Yeah, my first reaction was the same as yours, and granted, I was kind of getting this, like, not exactly in real time because I was on the beach.

...

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