Notre Dame exits its bye week knowing full well it controls its own destiny for a College Football Playoff berth. Win and you're in. All that's left to do is a

And as we sit here in the first week of the final month of the regular season, there are more than two dozen teams with a path to the 12-team CFP. Some are the teams still in the mix because they're alive in their conference races,

For much of the time after Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois, the Action Network's Brett McMurphy was not empathetic. He consistently had the Irish in the Pop-Tarts Bowl, thus rendering their first season in the expanded College Football Playoff era a failure.