College insider doesn’t like Notre Dame’s CFP ranking

With the first official College Football Playoff committee ranking in the books, it’s clear that Notre Dame is in right now. Ranked 10th, the Fighting Irish have successfully rebounded from their tough start. There was some speculation that the committee, which takes a lot more into account, might penalize the Irish and drop them from their AP Poll spot, but they didn’t. One insider believes they probably should have.

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The first two games of the season were close losses to ranked teams for Notre Dame. They lost to Texas A&M, which remains unbeaten. That’s still a good loss, and one that shouldn’t hurt the resume much. They also lost to Miami, which was ranked highly and spent a lot of time in the top 10, but two losses, including one to unranked SMU, have dropped them out of the top 15, so that loss isn’t aging as well.

With little else on the resume, SI’s Pat Forde doesn’t see how Notre Dame got ranked 10th. “Notre Dame is in position to make the College Football Playoff. It shouldn’t be—not yet, anyway—but it is. Those shiny gold helmets must have blinded the selection committee members to reality,” he wrote. “This kind treatment Tuesday was a bit more than Notre Dame deserves at this juncture. The Irish have one quality win, at home against 6–2 USC.”

He’s particularly baffled by the ranking of the Irish in comparison to the Louisville Cardinals. Louisville has a better record, and they beat the Miami Hurricanes. Yet, they’re ranked 15th and on the outside looking in. The committee praised how Notre Dame looks on both sides of the ball, which didn’t sit right with Forde. “The message seems to be that turning on the tape matters more than the game results,” he continued. “Or, it’s almost like brand name matters in college football.”

Forde finds this to be emblematic of a problem throughout the rankings. “All the squawking about strength of schedule didn’t lead to an overthrow of the status quo. The committee still largely ranked teams along win-loss lines,” he said. This was a fortunate turn for the Irish, who can now likely only move up, even though they won’t have any major wins coming the rest of the way.

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