Unimportant hypothetical: Would the 1977 team have made...

Maybe. Conference championship games might have helped.

It’s a good question though. Would ND have qualified for the playoff in 1989, or 1993? I would have like their chances.

if we're going to include conference championship games

as a possibility, we might have qualified in 1992 as well, if someone could have knocked off Miami/FSU/Texas AM (I believe Alabama did play in a championship game). We finished AP 5 after the regular season, and I am pretty sure we moved to either 4 or 3. Furthermore, if we had modern rules, we might have won the Michigan game in OT (instead of it being a tie).

The Stanford loss was bad, however. Might have been too much to overcome.

By the end of the 92 season, ND was as good as anyone.

Probably could have handled Miami. Holtz would have prepared that team well for Alabama. We saw what ND could do against FSU the following year. An undefeated A&M was no match for ND in the Cotton Bowl.

No. 1)Texas 2)Oklahoma 3)Alabama 4) Michigan 5) Notre Dame *

Who knocked Oklahoma off for us? *

Assuming this is not rhetorical

Arkansas did the trick with a rather convincing win over the Sooners.

A certain future ND coach was in charge of the Hogs at the time.

Holtz told an awesome story about that week

There was an incident on campus the day or two before Christmas and Holtz took a late night phone call.

He had to suspend 3 players that were responsible for 78% of the offensive production. (I believe through reading stories about this that this was part of a deal to get the players released from the charges)

So they're preparing for the game and his practices were not going well. So he stopped practice and brought the team together and said, "Look, we're getting ready to play a team that we last played 75 years ago and beat Arkansas 106-0...I know all the reasons we can't win this game: the media's telling me, our fans are telling me, coaches I know are telling me...so I know all the reasons we can't win. Now, you guys are going to tell me why we CAN win this game"

"Coach, we've got a great OLine"
"We've got an All American kicker and punter"
"our defense has been great all year and they're all playing"

(Holtz did add that he was disappointed nobody brought up that he was an excellent coach which obviously elicited a big laugh)

Arkansas was a heavy underdog and won 31-6 (helping springboard ND to the national championship)

He says that the attitude changed right then...when they started focusing on why they could win the game and stopped the focus on why they couldn't win. Great life lesson in there.

So he didn’t say to “Just do your job and execute” * *

Or “ we need to match our opponent’s intensity.”

A philosophy straight out of middle management.

it wasn't Holtz's job to motivate his team

but the guy whose job it was took the week off.

Holtz cared...Kelly doesn't.