Notre Dame No. 3 In Initial College Football Playoff Poll
Notre Dame’s strength of schedule was the vital piece to debuting at No. 3 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday night. It is the highest rating for Notre Dame in the four-year history of the CFP rankings.
The Fighting Irish were rated ahead of five other 7-1 teams — plus 8-0 Wisconsin and 7-0 Miami — because it is the lone team to defeat three teams in the top 25. Furthermore, their lone loss was by one point (20-19) to now No. 1 Georgia Sept. 9.
In addition to already having played the Bulldogs, the Irish own resounding victories against No. 17 USC (49-14), No. 20 North Carolina State (35-14) and No. 24 Michigan State (38-18). Still on the slate is the visit to No. 10 Miami (7-0) Nov. 11 and the road trek to No. 21 Stanford (6-2) Nov. 25.
The top 10 was as follows.
1. Georgia (8-0)
2. Alabama (8-0)
3. Notre Dame (7-1)
4. Clemson (7-1)
5. Oklahoma (7-1)
6. Ohio State (7-1)
7. Penn State (7-1)
8. TCU (7-1)
9. Wisconsin (8-0)
10. Miami (7-0)
The College Football Playoff matches the No. 1 seed versus No. 4, and No. 2 versus No. 3 in semifinal games that rotate annually among the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Goodyear Cotton Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, Allstate Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual and PlayStation Fiesta Bowl.
This season’s semifinals will take place on Jan. 1, 2018, at the Rose Bowl presented by Northwestern Mutual and the Allstate Sugar Bowl. The national championship game will be on Jan. 8, 2018, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Among the first 12 teams to make the College Football Playoff from 2014-16, only two — Oklahoma in 2015 and Ohio State in 2016 — made it in by playing only 12 games, which is what Notre Dame will have this year. The Irish have been given a 35.2 percent chance by the ESPN Football Power Index (FPI) to win out the rest of the regular season, so in a way it already is in a “playoff.”
“As an independent, after our loss to Georgia, we have to be aware of our situation. We’ve been in a one-game playoff since that loss,” Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly told ESPN’s Rece Davis. “Our guys are aware of their situation, but they have not listened to the noise. They have a great mindset coming into each and every week, and it will be no different.
“We’re two-thirds of the way through the season and we’ve got play well the next four games. We’ve got great teams on our schedule … they’re excited about where they are, but they know they’ve got a lot of work in front of them.”
Kelly told Davis he was not sure where Notre Dame would be ranked tonight because the only focus is to have a dominant mentality every time they take the field and see what the byproduct is on Selection Sunday Dec. 3.
“We really haven’t talked much about winning football games, about wins and losses, as much as how we play each and every week,” said Kelly, echoing what he has consistently stated throughout the season. “Our guys are excited. They’re 18- to 21-year olds, they’re on social media, they watch TV, they’re watching ESPN … they know what they need to do if they want to continue to have the kind of success that they’ve had.”
The Irish head coach also was asked how he would compare this year’s unit to his 2012 team that finished the regular season 12-0 before losing 42-14 to Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game.
“We changed the plan,” Kelly replied. “The blueprint is different. This is different when we were ranked fourth in the country in week 10 in 2015. This is a plan that we wanted to enact so that we could sustain and be there at the end and challenge for a national championship. It’s built on a physicality, controlling the line of scrimmage, playing great defense, and that’s who we are right now and we’re getting better each week.
“… We have a lot of respect for every opponent that we play, and it will be the same case this weekend. [Wake Forest] is a good football team that is well coached. We’ll have to have the same mindset going into the game.”
This marked the third time in the four-year history of the CFP rankings that Notre Dame debuted in the top 10.
In the inaugural poll in 2014 it began No. 10, but a November swoon dropped it to 7-5 in the regular season.
In 2015, the Irish debuted at No. 5 and moved into the top four, but unimpressive victories against Wake Forest (28-7) and Boston College (19-16), both of which finished 3-9, dropped them to No. 6 before losing the regular-season finale at Stanford (38-36) on the game’s final play to finish the regular season 10-2.
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