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Newsstand: Where Notre Dame lands in latest ESPN bowl projection

IMG_7504by:Jack Soble•10/23/24•

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Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman (Dale Zanine-Imagn Images)

One of ESPN’s bowl prognosticators has Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff. The other has them headed to central Florida.

Kyle Bonagura is the former, slotting the Irish as the No. 12 seed in ESPN’s latest bowl projections. He has them facing No. 5 Penn State in State College, Penn. on either Dec. 20 or Dec. 21 in the first round of the playoff. Mark Schlabach is the latter, forecasting a matchup with Texas Tech in the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

As fun as Notre Dame ritually sacrificing and eating a mascot-size Pop-Tart would be, that is certainly not the outcome Irish fans wanted entering the 2024 season.

“I dropped Notre Dame from my 12-team bracket, although the Irish are still very much in the discussion after their 31-13 win at banged-up Georgia Tech,” Schlabach said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Fighting Irish in the CFP selection committee’s bracket at the end, but for now I’m holding them off because of their ugly loss to Northern Illinois earlier this season.”

For ESPN’s full bowl projections, click here.

Notre Dame tweets of the day

Great book for a great cause:

Don’t forget about Jack Kiser.

Wise words from Aamil Wagner and Marcus Freeman:

Quote of the day

“We don’t look at them as freshmen. I know you have to give them a label in terms of their year, but we just look at them as players. I’ve said this before, if you’re in the NFL and you draft and play a couple guys, nobody cares that they’re rookies. That’s our mentality here. They’re talented, get those guys ready to go, and all of those guys have helped us. We’ve become younger, obviously, through injuries, but that’s okay. We’re not really — Navy doesn’t care about our age. No one on our schedule cares about our age, and we don’t either. We just want to get them ready to go.”

— Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden on linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, defensive end Bryce Young and cornerback Leonard Moore

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