Marcus Freeman’s Notre Dame program is pulling out all the stops to position itself for a College Football Playoff push in 2026 after coming up just short in 2025. With the Irish’s 2026 schedule now released, the College Football Playoff committee seems to have given Notre Dame a promising setup.
Marcus Freeman Faces Heat After Alabama Alumni Slam Notre Dame’s Claimed Advantage
The College Football Playoff announced several adjustments to its format for the 2026 season, including keeping the field at 12 teams next year. That call was made amid ongoing disagreements between the SEC and Big Ten over potential expansion. There were multiple tweaks to the structure, and Notre Dame is now assured a playoff spot if it finishes ranked in the selection committee’s top 12.
On Wednesday’s episode of “The Dynasty” podcast, former Alabama running back Trent Richardson and former Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron weighed in on the news. They said they are fine with the CFP staying at 12 teams, but they expressed frustration that Notre Dame appears to be treated differently from the rest of college football.
“Everybody’s playing field is a different man, and they just made it different again because they don’t have a conference championship,” Richardson said. “You can’t sit up there and go play a couple of teams in the ACC and be like, ‘Hey, we should be national champion.’ Then, when you lose to the team that you’re supposed to be so-called beat so to sit there and say that I need to be in the playoff system.”
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The new Notre Dame provision was introduced after the independent program became the first team left out of the 2025 playoff, finishing No. 11 in the CFP rankings. If that rule had existed then, the Irish would have earned a spot over No. 10 Miami, which ultimately advanced to the championship game against Indiana. Both Notre Dame and Miami finished 10-2 and had comparable results against shared opponents.
This provision was also one of the factors behind USC’s decision not to reach a compromise with Notre Dame and, ultimately, to skip a game against Freeman’s squad in 2026. The Notre Dame-USC rivalry has been played annually since 1926, aside from a three-year pause during World War II and the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
McCarron also echoed Richardson’s criticism, saying that Notre Dame continues to receive special treatment.
“Everybody’s just on a different set of rules, a group of fives on a different set of rules, power fours on a different set of rules, and then now Notre Dame on a different set of rules,” McCarron said. “The fact that, because of your contract and the money you bring in from that, is the reason that you don’t want to join a conference, because you can collect all the money from it.
“You don’t have to share it with anybody. So your revenue share could be bigger, and the fact that we sign a contract is because we’re upset. We’re not going to play in a bowl game, and now all of a sudden the NCAA, the CFP, have the need to help them out and protect poor old Notre Dame, makes college football a laughingstock. I mean, it just is what it is. I hate to say it, but it’s such a mess, and I just don’t understand.”
Besides that, Notre Dame has also drawn criticism for its 2026 schedule, which includes only one team from the 2025 CFP field, a home game against Miami on Nov. 7. The Irish finished last season ranked No. 8 in the PFSN College Football Offense Impact Metric with a score of 88.5.
Wow. Alabama is the one that got jumped over ND in the last week of the regular season while they struggled to get by a sub. 500 team while ND won by like 30, and then unlike every other team for protected from dropping when they looked like absolute trash in their conference championship against a team we found out a few weeks later wasn’t even top tier itself, the same week they showed themselves once again to be trash, while stomping even more overrated trash the week before, all this keeping genuine contender ND from getting a chance. And Alabama, who just got the most special treatment of any team in history, has the gall to say ND got special treatment? They were specially set up to be stomped on as a plot twist on purpose, you mean. No team not being especially shat on would be in the top 10 every ranking, win every week, and then me jumped at the end while no one behind them won and teams in front of them lost. What a trash take.