Happens in other sports all the time.
Trouble is, in CFB it's going head to head with a century-old empahsis on PURE WINNING PERCENTAGE which itself was the natural outcome of scores of teams, tens of conferences and a relatively small number of in-season games.
Once it's all placed in a neat, formalized, smaller-sized, conference-oriented structure, it's no longer purely a fight among the teams with the best winning percentages.
In a way, it's like moving from PLEBESCITE DEMOCRACY to the ELECTORAL COLLEGE. You're competing within a smaller field for a localized ELIGIBILITY TICKET rather than against the entire field.
And of course this complicates things for ND to a certain extent as it has CHOSEN -- given its empahsis on its own IDENTITY -- to remain an ANOMALY within this more tightly RULES-BOUND, more FORMALIZED structure.
But then, ND still seems to have enough HEFT to manage these sorts of CARVE-OUTS.
