Conveniently ignoring that Pitt was 6-2 in the ACC, and ND also beat #16 USC by 10 and blew out every other team they played, while Miami lost two games to ACC teams, including a middling Louisville team, and I'm the one spinning?
Can only play the teams on their schedule, and they scheduled 10 games against P4 opponents, 6 against the ACC, 2 SEC, 2 B1G, with 2 other games against Navy (who they schedule every year) and Boise State, who won the MWC and made the playoff last year. They lost two games by 4 total points in the first 2 weeks of the season.
That's why metrics exist, to take the implicit bias from the eye test out of the equation so teams can be empirically evaluated. By that evaluation, ND was a top 5 team that didn't get into a 12 team playoff, which just shouldn't happen.