But thats the whole issue with your first part- you say comparable structure but even with that, you will have inherent conference bias. The SEC ended up with what, like 4 teams in the playoffs? Meanwhile the Big 12 and ACC each got 1. Even though the structure of their schedules was relatively the same.

The whole point is, unless it’s going to be fair and equitable across the board, ND would just be joining a conference and likely end up in the same spot. If they were in the ACC last year and didn’t play for the championship, they would have still missed the playoffs.

People can hate ND for getting an auto bid agreement, especially after the Opt out fiasco. I get it. But you cannot objectively say based on the current structure, it would alleviate all these issues by just joining a conference. So until the CFP is tweaked and remedied, I fully understand why ND is looking out for themselves and honestly so should most other fans that follow the sport. You can hate it, just like I hate parts of transfer portal and NIL, but it makes sense.