How Would Losing The Wake Forest Game Impact Notre Dame's Playoff and ACC Title Game Chances
Notre Dame will not travel to Winston-Salem, N.C. this weekend to take on the Wake Forest Demon Deacons due to a rise in Covid-19 cases within the football program. That rise in cases also meant a significant rise in players being out due to contact tracing efforts.
Both Notre Dame and Wake Forest have open dates the following weekend (October 3), and the programs are said to be discussing rescheduling the game. That weekend might not work for Notre Dame either depending on how the next couple of days go.
With current contract tracing rules, which require a quarantine of 14 days, those out from this won’t be eligible to return until the week after the Oct. 3 game weekend. There’s a chance that players that test positive could be cleared by the time the Oct. 3 game would start, but they would not be able to practice at all up to that point.
It would seem unlikely that Notre Dame can be in position to play that weekend based on what we currently know. Notre Dame will work to reschedule the game for reasons discussed below, but even then it will be a challenge, and an argument could be made it's not worth it for Notre Dame to do so .... at least from a football standpoint.
So if that happens, what does that mean for Notre Dame and its College Football Playoff odds?
IMPACT ON PLAYOFF RESUME
This game should not have an impact on Notre Dame’s playoff resume for a number of reasons. With the ACC slated to play 11 games per team, the league is in position to still have more regular season games than any other league.
The SEC is set to play just 10 regular season games.
The Big 12 is set to play just 10 regular season games.
The Big Ten is set to play just 8 regular season games.
The Pac 12 is set to play 0 regular season games …. for now.
Even without this game the Irish will still have the same number of regular season games as any team outside of the ACC, assuming there are no other cancelations.
Wake Forest is currently 0-2, and with games at North Carolina, Louisville and Duke, plus home games against Miami, Virginia Tech and Virginia still on the schedule it’s likely we’ll see a sub .500 record from the Deacons. Should that happen, losing this game means Notre Dame loses one of the bottom half teams from its schedule, so it would actually improve the overall strength of schedule.
Notre Dame could work to reschedule this game, but honestly there is just no need to do so.
IMPACT ON ACC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME CHANCES
When Notre Dame joined the ACC, and the league decided to keep playing, it eliminated the division for the season. No Coastal, no Atlantic. Its title game will feature the two teams with the highest conference-game winning percentage. This is an area where things could get dicey for Notre Dame due to the fact it will have one less conference game than some of the top teams in the league.
If Notre Dame runs the table in the league there is no issue, unless for some bizarre reason that I don’t think it possible there are three undefeated teams. If Notre Dame loses a game it could get a bit more complex.
Let’s say Notre Dame beats North Carolina, Clemson beats Notre Dame and North Carolina beats everyone else they play. North Carolina just lost a game against Charlotte, but that was a non-conference game. In this scenario, Notre Dame’s conference win percentage would be .889 while both Clemson and North Carolina would have a .900 win percentage and would get the nod over Notre Dame since the head-to-head wouldn’t matter since they wouldn’t have identical win percentages.
That means Notre Dame needs to either A) win out, or B) hope everyone else in the conference loses two games. Of course, having a one-loss opponent lose a conference game at some point would also even things out a bit.
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