Brian Kelly's Notre Dame team already this season owns a win over the top-ranked team, has stretched major college football's longest winning streak to 14 games and sits atop the Atlantic Coast Conference standings – in the program's only-ever appearance in said standings.
With College Football Playoff positioning and seeding within sight, Kelly also is taking an opportunity to emphasize another point: the Irish are the only Power-5 team already 8-0 this season – a schedule that the Big Ten's top team, Ohio State, might not even reach.
The Buckeyes are 3-0, sitting behind Alabama and Notre Dame, respectively, in Sunday's latest AP Top 25 after seeing their game scheduled Saturday at Maryland postponed by the Terps due to a COVID-19 outbreak. OSU now is set for seven games plus a potential Big Ten Championship game appearance.
"We've already played a Big Ten schedule,” Kelly said on his Zoom Saturday after his No. 2 Notre Dame dispatched host Boston College, 45-31. “We've completed eight games, and that's clearly more than the PAC-12 will play.
“It takes a lot. Our team was tired (Saturday) and you could see that they were, especially on defense, because it requires a lot of mental energy and certainly the physical (toll) of playing a lot of games.”
Kelly's point is not without merit. In joining the ACC as a provisional member in this unprecedented 2020 season, Notre Dame is now two months into its schedule after opening Sept. 12 against Duke.
With eight games in the rearview, the Fighting Irish are open this week before their closing slate consisting of road games at North Carolina (Nov. 27), vs. Syracuse (Dec. 5) and a make-up game at Wake Forest Dec. 12 after originally being scheduled for Sept. 26.
The ACC Championship game is scheduled for Dec. 19.
“All those things matter when we talk about cumulative games across the board,” said Kelly, of Notre Dame's path this season.
"When you're picking your teams, if this is just one game and you want to put up one team in one game, yeah, it's pretty easy to see who is really good for one week. To stretch it out over, for us, we're going to play 11, 12 games (including a presumed bid in the ACC Championship). That's a whole different test that we're going to be facing than some other schools that aren't going to play as many games as we are."