[stupac2]

I wouldn't say resume *doesn't* matter, but it certainly matters much less than record.

Well sure, some team's resumes matter. But if we take our goal as making the playoff, then you have these facts:

1) The only contenders are the Power 5 winners and ND.
2) The contenders will basically be sorted by losses (meaning it's highly unlikely that a team with N losses is bumped by a team with N+1 losses).
3) Ties go to the better conference.
4) Close calls after that defer to OOC resume.

(It's certainly possible that this is wrong, since we're only working off of 1 year of data and we're talking about a bunch of people making a decision it's hardly scientific, but given the way people's perception of CFB works and given that, according to reporting last year, the committee doesn't really use advanced stats, the above is probably right.)

Given all that the number of scenarios where beating 10-1 ND matter are vanishingly small, especially because 9-2 ND still gives us a ton of credit while (probably) keeping them out of the playoff. And when you factor in ND being our main recruiting competitor, we want them to be as bad as possible.

Plus ND is by far the most annoying program in college football. I find it utterly incomprehensible that anyone could ever root for them in any circumstances.

[stupac2]

I wouldn't say resume *doesn't* matter, but it certainly matters much less than record.

Well sure, some team's resumes matter. But if we take our goal as making the playoff, then you have these facts:

1) The only contenders are the Power 5 winners and ND.
2) The contenders will basically be sorted by losses (meaning it's highly unlikely that a team with N losses is bumped by a team with N+1 losses).
3) Ties go to the better conference.
4) Close calls after that defer to OOC resume.

(It's certainly possible that this is wrong, since we're only working off of 1 year of data and we're talking about a bunch of people making a decision it's hardly scientific, but given the way people's perception of CFB works and given that, according to reporting last year, the committee doesn't really use advanced stats, the above is probably right.)

Given all that the number of scenarios where beating 10-1 ND matter are vanishingly small, especially because 9-2 ND still gives us a ton of credit while (probably) keeping them out of the playoff. And when you factor in ND being our main recruiting competitor, we want them to be as bad as possible.

Plus ND is by far the most annoying program in college football. I find it utterly incomprehensible that anyone could ever root for them in any circumstances.