Pretty impressive what you guys have done given all of those injuries.

Welp...down to #6 after AIDSing it up vs. BC and Oklahoma up to #3. The positive is that Stanford is #9, ahead of Okie St. at #11. Looks like we need to win and get help.

RIP

Still think you control your own destiny?

Honestly....Yes

IF Notre Dame beats Stanford they jump Michigan St (With a win or loss vs Penn St).
Iowa is only a 1 pt favorite this week at Nebraska... It's possible they lose this week and beat Michigan St in the Big 10 championship game (If Mich St beats Penn St). Or they win out so that cancels out either one or both of those teams.
Oklahoma still has Oklahoma St at Oklahoma St
Alabama still has Auburn at Auburn and Florida in the SEC championship game
Clemson still has South Carolina at South Carolina and North Carolina in the ACC Championship game
Michigan State needs help IMO. First they need to beat Penn St then they need Iowa to beat Nebraska. Then obviously beat Iowa.

If Notre Dame takes care of business Saturday I believe everything else falls into place.

I don't think "control your own destiny" means what you think it means.

please stop quoting angerpush posts

many people have him on ignore

It's a pointless question really. ND beating Stanford is a big 'IF' for now just as it is a big 'IF' that we get clean Clemson / Alabama / Big 10 Champ / Oklahoma from here. Lots of football to be played.

Really will be so much clearer after this weekend...

Let me simplify... If Notre Dame wins Saturday night I believe they will be in the playoffs.

Understood.

told ya

This, exactly
You have had me on ignore for years. No big deal, but I see no reason why you say this. I'm having a discussion that is both relevant and constructive.

Listen man, I'm not trolling you or the like. I enjoy partaking is constructive discussion and the Notre Dame/Oklahoma situation and the CFP rankings in general interest me a great deal. I'm very active in the college football threads, and actually don't even recognize you. I guess you must contain your CFB posts to this thread, which is cool.

I engaged with you because I disagree with you and would like to have healthy discussion. It appears that your Notre Dame brethren tend to disagree with you about whether ND controls its destiny or not (certainly not). Will ND more than likely make the CFP if it wins Saturday? I believe so. However, destiny is not controlled because besides your own game, you need at least one other domino to fall. Everyone else seems to understand this.

FWIW, there are a lot of people that find that domer2 contributes nothing at all to 2p2. I've seen people refer to his politics posting as terrible, but that is a section of 2p2 I rarely venture.

It's not a pointless question at all. There's just one more full week of games and then a few during championship weekend. Many people truly enjoy discussing the ins and outs of rankings. If that's not you, I understand, but to call it pointless is inaccurate. That's one of the things that makes college football so much fun and intriguing. We discuss and debate rankings. We get to enhance our fandom by comparing resumes of different teams and hopefully become more educated as we learn from each other through constructive discussion.

Thank you for simplifying. I also believe this. That if Notre Dame wins against Stanford, more than likely, ND will find itself in the top 4 and earn a berth in the 2nd College Football Playoff.

However, I also believe it is more likely than not that Stanford wins. I also believe that if Notre Dame wins, they will need at least 1 team ahead of them to lose. Thus, their destiny is not controlled. When people use this term, they do not mean that if a team wins out that more than likely they will advance/clinch/etc, what they mean is that said team does not need anything else to happen.

For instance, I believe we can all agree that Clemson controls its own destiny. Even if they get the sloppiest and most underwhelming wins possible against South Carolina and North Carolina, Clemson will still be in the top 4. There is no way they are 13-0 and not in the top 4. There are scenarios where Notre Dame wins out to be 11-1 and still misses the CFP.

I hope that this clarifies what the term "Control your own destiny means". In week 4 it is a silly term to use, because we all know if you need 1 domino to fall out of thousands of possibilities, it is asinine to not round that chance up to 100%. However, with just 1-2 games remaining for each team, it is a very useful term.

By all means, have faith in your team. However, I greatly respect some of the other ND posters that freely admit that the Boston College game, while a victory, actually hurt Notre Dame overall.

Idk, it's pretty obvious (to me at least) that AP posts in good faith. I also appreciate the perspective that non-ND fans bring to this thread--especially when it's more substantive than "lol ND sucks" or things of that nature.

he's been nominated about 200 times in the bad SE posters thread

he is here to pick a fight

just because he spams a lot of white noise does not mean he is posting in good faith; it means he has a lot of time on his hands

Pick a fight? Lol. I've been higher on ND than most this year and had a very balanced view. Like I said, I'm active in the weekly rankings thread and enjoy that type of discussion. There's no fight to pick. My team is out of it, so at this point I just want to see the 4 most deserving teams in, which could very well be ND.

I just reread the posts I've made itt this week and other than the clearly tongue-in-cheek "lol BCS bowl, living in the past" comment, I can't figure out how someone would think I'm not posting in good faith. I believe I've been balanced, respectful and analytical. This year's ND/Oklahoma debate has piqued my interest. I really don't have a rooting interest either way. And afaik, there is no OU thread so I browsed in here.

I've conversed with Dvo, DMW and Mars, among others, much this year and can't remember having any issues. Sure, some us can be innocently sarcastic sometimes, but I believe it's all in good fun. In fact, a few weeks ago Mars told me he appreciated that I've had a balanced view when discussing rankings and I appreciated that.

And regarding the bad poster thread nomination, to my knowledge maybe once in the past year or two. And honestly, it's usually when I'm screwing around to the extreme and ppl think I'm crazy. It's hard to take that thread too seriously sometimes. A lot of ppl "nominate" people when they disagree with someone. That said, I'm not 100% proud of every post I've ever made, but I try to improve, learn and have fun.

The above series is a run of incredibly reasonable posts tbf.

Yes AP, I don't massively enjoy the debating of hypotheticals, or at least not in SE because I feel it amounts to people arguing for their own biased view of why conference x is the best (see Goofball's laughable charity to the SEC in his model) or team y sucks (see Palo's extensive body of work on why ND should never ever be allowed near the playoff with one loss). I also find the 'well who cares what will happen, I want to talk about my power rankings or perception of which team would win on a neutral field' angles tiresome as the have no relevance to how College football is constructed.

But, that's me - other people do like that debate and you've been very reasonable in the rankings threads this year. I also think you're right to say we don't 'control our own destiny' when we need other results to fall - though I do feel BBB624 is correct to point out that teams at the upper echelon of the rankings tend to drop games in surprising fashion around this time each season.

The bottom line for ND within the updated structure is always going to be that we'll playoff when 12 - 0, and be looking for a certain set of circumstances around us to playoff with one or two losses. I'm fine with that as it isn't something new really - even in the Holtz era we were denied a National Championship in debatable fashion in 1989 and 1993. Win all your games has always been the one sure fire path to victory.

I don't think Angerpush has ever dipped below the bar of acceptable discourse for SE talk. That's usually reserved for the oafs who actually/want to believe BK murdered a student and covered up his imaginary rape.

Happy Thanksgiving! Saturday can't come soon enough.

LFG!!!!!!!!

Ugh. Irish hoopsters lose to Monmouth.

There's one way we can win this game. I just don't know what it is.

I'm here in Palo Alto potentially against my better judgment. Lots of ND fans in town.