Notre Dame belongs

Notre Dame landing at No. 10 in the initial CFP rankings triggered familiar eye rolls, but the Irish are actually undervalued. If you set aside brand bias and look at power ratings and hypothetical point spreads, Notre Dame grades as a clear top-five caliber team right now. On a neutral field, they’d be favored or a coin-flip against most of the teams slotted ahead of them. That’s the whole point of rating strength: who beats whom on Saturday, not who opened the year with a shinier résumé line.

It’s understandable that the current top seven are seeded higher for now—early résumés, timing of losses, and poll inertia always shape the first release. But the committee’s job is to find the best teams for December and January, and nobody will want Notre Dame in their quadrant. This roster travels: an efficient, physical front, a quarterback who protects the ball, and complementary football that squeezes possessions and wins situational downs.

The wild card is focus. If Marcus Freeman is fully locked in at South Bend—and all signs suggest he is—Notre Dame owns a national-title pathway as live as anyone’s. Slot them higher, and let the bracket prove what the numbers already say: the Irish belong in the top tier.