Sitting inside the visitor's locker room at AT&T Stadium on the heels of a 30-3 blowout loss this past December, Notre Dame's players and coaches said they had no doubts about the program's ability to compete for national championships in the future.
The Fighting Irish have lost by a combined 55 points in the two postseason games they've played with a title shot hanging in the balance this decade. After the first, a 42-14 loss to Alabama at the end of the 2012 season, head coach Brian Kelly said the gap between his team and winning it all felt as large as it ever had.