...if they Win the Conference it would have been awarded that 1st spot anyway.
If it does NOT win the conference but remains higher ranked than ANY other ACC team then it is eligible 1 time every ten years to take the ACC's auto-berth. If you do the math in means ND has absent this year, barely a slightly better opportunity to get a NY6 berth than BYU on 1 of ten years or in any year it finishes higher than say Clemson this year. That means in most years ND is just as dependent on rankings and polls as BYU and the access is almost exactly the same.