Notre Dame Football: 5 Reasons Irish upset Clemson in Cotton Bowl

4. Notre Dame has been tested

In the actual rankings of strength of schedule, Clemson ranks at No. 16 while Notre Dame sits at No. 25. I don’t agree with that though. I think that Notre Dame has had quite the fight to get where they are and that will show against the Tigers on Saturday evening in Dallas.

All things considered- who did Clemson play? They nearly lost to a Jimbo Fisher coached Texas A&M team. They struggled with Syracuse. The rest of their schedule consists of teams like Boston College, NC State, Georgia Tech, Georgia Southern…the list goes on. I am truly not sure who makes the Clemson schedule seem so hard, but while they breezed through their schedule outside of the matchup with Jimbo Fisher and his Aggies- Notre Dame played games much closer to the wire and that means something to me.

Notre Dame beat Michigan. Notre Dame beat Northwestern. Notre Dame beat USC. They took down eight bowl eligible teams not including Navy, Florida State and USC. At least two of those teams that I think could give Clemson a run for their money, especially the Clemson that is now grappling with the loss of players we will discuss a little later.

While the schedule strength may be a slight difference, it seems to me that this Notre Dame team has been tested more. They have been exposed to more stressful situations. Go ahead and say that means they sputtered too much or something like that- I don’t agree with you. Struggle builds character and as a result, Notre Dame has quite a bit of just that heading into this one.