Newsstand: Notre Dame lands at No. 6 in Phil Steele’s Preseason Top 10
Every year, college football analyst Phil Steele predicts the preseason Associated Press Poll’s top 10. This season, Steele projected Notre Dame at No. 6.
Steele, who claims to boast a 95.3 percent accuracy rating over the past 15 years, has only Georgia, Ohio State, Texas, Oregon and Alabama ranked ahead of the Irish in his AP Poll prediction. Michigan, Penn State, Ole Miss and Missouri rounded out the top 10.
Steele made only one change from his February rendition of a projected AP Poll top 10: He moved Oregon ahead of Alabama. The rest of the rankings remain the same.
Steele’s only miss last season: He predicted the writers to put the Irish in the preseason top 10; they put Washington instead.
“When I did the AP Top 10 in February [2023], Notre Dame had signed Sam Hartman and I figured that would put them over the top,” Steele wrote. “I had Notre Dame as the #10 team in the poll but it was the Washington Huskies who were #10 in the preseason AP poll, and the writers did a good job with that as they went undefeated all the way up to the national title game.”
Notre Dame Tweets of the day
Two huge personnel hires for Notre Dame football:
Irish tight end commit James Flanigan is an otherworldly athlete.
Rocketry school.
Quote of the day
“When I first got in college football [in 2019], it wasn’t that way. We were, at West Virginia, completely missing an area that a lot of college teams were, which was the pro personnel department. What free agency prep was is now portal prep. You don’t know if that guy’s gonna re-sign or not; you have to be ready in case he doesn’t.”
— Notre Dame director of scouting Matt Jansen
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- Fighting Irish make key hire to recruiting department, several others add significant promotions
