Where Notre Dame football stands in latest post-spring top 25 rankings
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman better be fine with expectations. He’s going to be facing a lot of them in his first season in charge of the Fighting Irish this fall.
Freeman inherited one of just five programs that has won at least 10 games in each of the last five seasons. Naturally, media outlets around the country are holding Notre Dame to that standard even with the man primarily responsible for those wins, LSU coach Brian Kelly, is down in Baton Rouge now.
Sporting News’ Bill Bender and Fox Sports’ RJ Young both released post-spring top 25 rankings in the last week. Notre Dame checked in at No. 7 in each set of rankings.
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A top-10 finish for the Irish would likely mean a one- or two-loss season. Considering Notre Dame opens at Ohio State, the No. 2 team in both Bender and Young’s polls, and plays three other teams — Clemson, USC and BYU — ranked in at least one of the polls, finishing the year where many believe the Irish will start it would not be so bad.
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Bender wrote that “strength of schedule won’t be an issue” with those teams on the slate, but Notre Dame was in a similar position last year when Wisconsin, Cincinnati, USC and North Carolina were all ranked inside the top 15 in the preseason Associated Press top 25 rankings. Only Cincinnati remained ranked in the final poll.
Ohio State has a slew of offensive weapons to work with in 2022, and USC is expected to take a huge step forward with new head coach Lincoln Riley and quarterback Caleb Williams coming over from Oklahoma. Clemson is Clemson, even after a “down” 10-3 season last year. BYU is one of five programs in the country bringing all of the major pieces to its coaching staff back from the previous season.
If Notre Dame is truly a top-10 caliber team, the Irish are going to have to prove it in Freeman’s first year.
Here’s a look at Bender and Young’s post-spring top 25s.
Sporting News post-spring college football top 25
- Alabama
- Ohio State
- Georgia
- Clemson
- Texas A&M
- Michigan
- Notre Dame
- Utah
- Oregon
- Baylor
- Oklahoma
- Oklahoma State
- Michigan State
- USC
- Arkansas
- Ole Miss
- Kentucky
- Wake Forest
- NC State
- Iowa
- Pitt
- Cincinnati
- Houston
- Tennessee
- Texas
Fox Sports post-spring college football top 25
- Alabama
- Ohio State
- Georgia
- Texas A&M
- Baylor
- Arkansas
- Notre Dame
- Texas
- Oklahoma
- Ole Miss
- Utah
- Clemson
- Michigan State
- Michigan
- Oklahoma State
- BYU
- Houston
- Cincinnati
- USC
- Minnesota
- Wisconsin
- Kentucky
- Oregon
- Penn State
- LSU
