Notre Dame beat Syracuse 70-7 on Saturday. It was fun and wonderful and full of good vibes, but it wasn’t like they beat Oregon 70-7. So, anyone out there that gave even a little credence to the possibility of moving up in the rankings this week — well they were wrong. On Sunday, both the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll had Notre Dame ranked #9 for the third week in a row.
There simply wasn’t anything of note that happened in front of Notre Dame to initiate a move. USC choked against Oregon, and Missouri
couldn’t exploit an Oklahoma team that looked a little out of sorts.
That’s college football.
So going into the final regular season weekend of games, there are a number of outcomes that could potentially help the Irish — just as there are those that could hurt the Irish. Then again… maybe everything evens out again (which isn’t great).
Notre Dame made a big leap in week 7 when they jumped from #21 to #16 and followed the next week up with a jump to #13, and then #12. Five weeks later they have reached the dreaded ceiling with one game to go. In fact, the Irish were just 32 points away from Oklahoma last week, and now it’s 52.
Obviously, these aren’t the playoff rankings, but I find it hard to believe it will be much different.
I do want to say this… conference expansion has made everything crazy. It’s not really the strength of schedule stuff, it’s how there can be so many undefeated and one loss teams going into the final week. The schedules are uneven for a conference setup, and not really condusive to multiple major shakeups.
It is what it is. We’ll find out more about where the Irish stand tuesday night.
