Arizona State’s matchup against Notre Dame could hurt title chances

The Pac-12 Conference still isn’t very good at football scheduling. It encourages its schools to play tough nonconference games, even in November, at the risk of everything.

It is already at a competitive disadvantage, its 12 teams each playing nine conference games while the Southeastern Conference’s 14 teams play eight league games.

And you wonder why the SEC pushes more teams to the top?

The SEC’s system allows a team such as Georgia to be ranked No. 17 in the polls, in November, with not one victory coming against a currently ranked SEC opponent.

Georgia’s best SEC win was at Missouri, which lost at home to Indiana, which is 0-4 in Big Ten Conference games.

Pac-12 madness, usually reserved for the midnight hour, appears in the midday sun when Arizona State hosts Notre Dame on Saturday. That’s the same day the SEC’s Magnolia State franchises, No. 1 Mississippi State and No. 11 Mississippi, are hosting Tennessee Martin and Presbyterian.

Arizona State insisted on playing Notre Dame even after the Irish tried to back out. The game was scheduled in 2008 before Notre Dame entered its agreement to play five Atlantic Coast Conference teams each year.

Notre Dame wanted to lighten its competitive load, but former Arizona State athletic director Steve Patterson held the Irish to the deal.

So here we are. Arizona State has overcome a wipeout loss to UCLA and risen to No. 9 in this week’s College Football Playoff ranking.

Taking on No. 10 Notre Dame is wonderful for fans and college football, but it could cost the Pac-12 another chance at a national championship.

Arizona State Coach Todd Graham gets it. He loves the idea of playing Notre Dame in November. “I want to coach in this game,” he said this week. “It’s pretty awesome. And our players want to play in these games. And our fans want to see these games.”

It’s just that these types of games make little sense for Arizona State and the Pac-12 as college football is presently constructed.

For example, Mississippi State is playing an eight-game league schedule with a nonconference sampler of Southern Mississippi, Alabama Birmingham, South Alabama and Tennessee Martin.

This season, Mississippi State rocketed from unranked to No. 11 with a win over a Texas A&M team that, we know now, was grossly overrated and is no longer ranked.

Mississippi State is not dumb for its scheduling; it is smart. The selection committee pays lip service to nonconference strength of schedule when you also play in the SEC West.

And while the Pac-12 South isn’t as deep in tough teams as the SEC West, it’s strong enough to produce a playoff team without insisting on holding Notre Dame to a contract.

Arizona State, 7-1 overall, will be the second of three Pac-12 schools playing Notre Dame this season, joining Stanford and USC.

“If the system is the way it is now, we’re adversely hurting ourselves by scheduling games you could possibly lose, right?” Graham asked this week.

A second loss, in a nonconference game that it didn’t have to play, would likely knock Arizona State out of the playoff — even if were to defeat Oregon in the Pac-12 title game.

Graham is correct in wanting to play these games, but only in a context that won’t punish a school for doing it. Graham is also correct in saying the only way to solve this going forward is an eight-team playoff, in which the five major conference champions would earn automatic bids into the field. That would leave three at-large berths and create more incentive to schedule meaningful nonconference games.

It is possible to have the best of both worlds, but not in a world where the conferences play by different sets of rules.

In the end, isn’t that why, at least in part, the SEC rules?