Pate's mock College Football Playoff bracket, sketched out in early August before a single snap of the season, ends with Notre Dame beating Texas for the national championship — and Pate said so while conceding, almost in the same breath, that Notre Dame's road there wouldn't leave the Irish "battle tested at all."

The bracket itself is the setup worth knowing. Pate has LSU traveling to BYU in Provo, USC going to Texas, Oklahoma on the road at Oregon, and Indiana drawing Boise State as a result of landing the five seed.

That last detail matters more than it sounds. A five seed getting Boise instead of a harder out is the kind of bracket break that turns into a run, and Pate built his whole Final Four around it.

The Argument

Asked how it shakes out from there, Pate didn't hedge. "So, how would this shake out? Your final four is Notre Dame Indiana on one side of the bracket, Ohio State Texas on the other side of the bracket," he said.

He called it the biggest thing to happen to the state of Indiana since Larry Bird, which is the kind of line that's funnier than it is a real football argument — but the pick underneath it is serious. "I think Notre Dame wins this game right now in August," Pate said of the Notre Dame-Indiana side.

On the other half of the bracket, his lean was thinner. "I think I would very so slightly lean Texas" over Ohio State, he said — not a strong take, just a preference, and he was honest about the margin being small. That's the Herbstreit part of this: Pate isn't pretending Texas is clearly better than Ohio State. He's saying the matchup is close enough that a slight lean is all he's willing to commit to in August, which is a more honest way to build a bracket than manufacturing certainty where none exists.

That sets up the final: "And Notre Dame Texas is an unbelievable national championship game. Coin up in the air, it lands Notre Dame."

It's a coin flip presented as a coin flip — Pate isn't dressing up a 50/50 game as some deep scouting insight. He's picking a side and admitting that's basically what it is.

The Honest Complication

Here's where Pate himself supplies the counter-argument, without anyone prompting him. "Notre Dame won the national championship in August with that schedule, Jesse. Not battle tested at all. Imagine a team with that kind of schedule winning at all. It's almost like the schedule didn't matter once the playoffs started."

That's Pate flagging the exact hole in his own pick — a Notre Dame team that, by his own description, wouldn't have been tested much before getting there. It's the classic playoff paradox: strength of schedule matters enormously in the selection room and barely at all once the bracket starts, and Pate's pick leans directly into that irony rather than around it. Whether a lightly tested Notre Dame team actually survives four playoff rounds is a different question than whether it deserves the bracket seed to get the chance, and Pate's bracket only answers the second one.

It's also worth remembering what this exercise actually is: a bracket built in early August, before fall camp battles are settled, before injuries happen, before Indiana or Texas or Notre Dame plays a game that counts. Brackets built in August are useful for arguments on a Friday show. They are not useful as forecasts, and Pate treating his own Texas lean as a coin flip is the tell that he knows the difference.

Still, the LSU-BYU game in Provo remains the most interesting hypothetical in the whole bracket, and Pate isn't wrong that Baton Rouge landing in Provo in December would be a genuine culture clash worth watching regardless of what it means for seeding.

August brackets are for fun, and this one delivers plenty of it. Just don't be shocked if the version Pate is actually watching in January looks nothing like the one he drew up this week — least of all the part where the schedule that couldn't get Notre Dame battle tested somehow got them a trophy.