Notre Dame won its third College Football Playoff game in a row on Thursday night and now awaits the Ohio State-Texas winner in the national championship. Since losing to Northern Illinois, the Fighting Irish have clearly been one of, if not the best college football team in the nation. By knocking off Penn State in the semifinals, Notre Dame also ran its record against Top 25 teams to 7–0 on the year. One would think that it would be hard to find someone to rain on what could be an impending golden parade but First Take was able to find Cam Newton to do just that.

His takeaway?

Notre Dame, the most famous independent program in college football history, should buck tradition and join a conference.

"They're 7–0 against ranked opponents," Newton said. "Now that could be a very subjective and real kind of skewed kind of statistic. Those teams are as follows: Texas A&M, okay. Louisville, Navy [laughs], Indiana, Army, Georgia without Carson Beck and then also Penn State. With that, I'm not trying to rain on their parade because their defense is legit. But I'm saying the road to where they've gotten, that's my question."

That's certainly Newton's right to feel that way. But why in the world would Notre Dame want to join a conference right now? The are able to craft a schedule that's difficult enough to allow them entry into the College Football Playoff if they only stumble once and they don't have to share any of the juice that comes with making and advancing deep into this 12-team tournament.

A team that is clearly very good just won three playoff games. It's a very confusing thing to do to reach out and ding them for some reason, when they clearly belong where they're going. Did Notre Dame get some luck? Sure. Good luck finding a championship team in any sport that didn't also catch some breaks. Could they have navigated the ACC this year to make the playoff? Very likely. And that probably would have come with a first-round bye to make their path much easier. The Irish cannot currently earn a free pass to the quarterfinals because they are independent. A person could argue that, long-term, that's going to challenge them even more when it comes to winning national titles than joining a conference would.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cam Newton Not Trying to Rain on Notre Dame's Parade But Wants Them in a Conference.