College Football playoff ranking disproves shortsighted and lazy narrative around Notre Dame football

Over the last several weeks, and even since the Irish lost to Northern Illinois, there have been fans spouting off about how Notre Dame had no chance of making the playoffs. Rational thinking would say that an 11-1 Irish team would always make the playoffs, but the naysayers didn’t want to hear it.

That was clearly proven in this instance. While there is no excuse for the Northern Illinois loss, you also can’t discount beating Texas A&M and Louisville, both of which made the Top 25 rankings at No. 14 and No. 22 respectively. Notre Dame will also play Army in a couple of weeks, who is ranked at No. 25.

In fact, you could have had a serious argument that Notre Dame should have even been a tad bit higher. With the quality of victories such a main talking point for the committee, it’s hard to justify having schools like BYU, Indiana, Tennessee, or even Penn State ahead of them.

As stated before, this ranking will change, so arguing that point doesn’t really matter in the end. What the final ranking looks like the Tuesday after conference championship week is all that matters.

With that narrative now dispelled, we can focus on the projection at hand. Playing James Franklin and Penn State in the first round? Yes, please. Coach Franklin currently holds a 3-19 record against top 10 teams in his Penn State tenure, and is just 1-7 at home. It’s hard not to like Notre Dame’s chances in that one.

From there, things would get a whole lot tougher. If the Irish were able to come out with a victory, they would be tasked with taking on the (2) Georgia Bulldogs. Even with them being a bit bipolar so far this season, Georgia is still a very talented team. That would be an incredibly intriguing matchup overall.

If Notre Dame could somehow win that game against Georgia as well, then it would be the winner of Miami and Alabama/Texas. It would be a tricky road, but a potentially very entertaining one at the very least.