Reggie Bush sides with College Football Playoff format thanks to Notre Dame

Opinions of the new look College Football Playoff have run rampant over the past month. But through it all, just two teams remain from the 12-team field. Notre Dame and Ohio State are set to compete in the national championship on Monday. Both were at-large bids and to this point, have won three postseason games.

For ESPN’s Reggie Bush, Notre Dame, specifically, is an example of why the expanded CFP is working after just one year. Bush pointed out the Fighting Irish had trouble getting into the four-team field at times, making just two appearances over a decade.

Going to 12 teams helped Marcus Freeman‘s team out and now, they are just one game away from a national championship.

“When you look at Notre Dame and how far along they’ve come, I think it’s just proof that the College Football Playoff system works,” Bush told On3’s Nick Kosko in an exclusive interview. “Because in the past years, Notre Dame has not been able to get in when it was just four teams. There was always the question of if they should join a conference or not because being independent hurts you in that four-team playoff. But now, we’ve seen Notre Dame validate this true playoff system.”

Notre Dame made the four-team College Football Playoff in 2018 and 2020, losing to Clemson and Alabama. Both teams went on to win the national championship too.

If the 12-team format was around since the inception, you could double the Irish’s appearances. In 2015, they finished at No. 8 in the final rankings while they were the final team left out in 2021. Cincinnati was the four-seed instead of Notre Dame, the lone loss on that team’s resume.

While Notre Dame will hardly be viewed as a Cinderella story, there is still a loss to Northern Illinois people bring up. Previous years would have left them completely out, no questions asked. One-loss teams got into the CFP routinely but no conference championship plus a damaging loss would have been fatal.

Instead, the program can win its first national championship since the late 1980s. Just one year of expansion is already yielding positive results, in Bush’s eyes. Not only has Notre Dame found itself included in the field but found ways to win as well.