Notre Dame needed several different things to happen in order to breath easy and go into Selection Sunday confident it would make the College Football Playoff. All of those things happened. Boise State blew out UNLV in the Mountain West title game. Texas Tech blew out BYU and then Georgia blew out Alabama.
It's that last game that might have pushed the Irish from nervous about Sunday night, to expecting to get a berth. The Crimson Tide entered Saturday with very good odds to get an at-large bid. However, they were absolutely dominated by Georgia's offense and defense and eventually lost 28-7.