ND Ranked No. 5 in The Athletic's Post-Spring Rankings
- Thread starter Drinking The Green Koolaid
- Start date
I hesitate to use the word "expectation," but here is how I see the season playing out:
1. ND will make the 12-team CFB playoff.
2. Because we are not in a conference we cannot get one of the 4 first-round byes, but we will make the top 8 and will get to play a first-round game at home.
3. We will win our first-round game and make it to the quarterfinals. After that, everything is gravy. I would love for us to make it to the semifinals and then the championship game, but obviously you are playing some very tough competition at that point and who knows whether there will be injuries to key players. For ND to win a Natty it would have to win 4 games against the best of the best, and that is a tall order. You need depth on your roster (I think we have that) and a little bit of luck. I expect we should have a very strong defense if we stay healthy, and that should bode well for playoff time. Our OL will have to develop for us to be a contender, and Leonard will have to stay healthy and play well.
I am looking forward to this season.
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There is a lot of consensus with the top four. After that, it is a bit of a crap shoot at this point in the year.
He's getting 5 years, and there is nothing any of us can do about it. I believe his seat will start to get very warm. Let's hope for 11-1 or 12-0
With the new playoff, the name of the game clearer than ever. There's 12 slots, you gotta get in, and then you go from there. So the pressure is on MF for sure. Get into the playoff. Hate to say no exceptions, but.... Especially if like, we don't need to join a conference with this new format. Well you better get in then....
Chances are, if you don’t get in, you don’t deserve to be in.
If ND can beat TAM, it takes a lot of pressure off of everyone.
There are basically eight spots and unless it’s an unusual year, a two loss ND team should have a good chance of making one of those eight teams
There are only seven spots available. One is reserved for the highest-ranked G5 conference champion. So we need to finish in the top 11 to guarantee a spot.
What would be interesting would be the dilemma caused by a conference champion not being in the top 12 or top 20
A conference champion could be a champion with a mediocre to poor record
They'd still get in. It's the 5 highest-ranked conference champions. Last year, Liberty was the top G5 champion, at #23.
Happens in other sports all the time.
Trouble is, in CFB it's going head to head with a century-old empahsis on PURE WINNING PERCENTAGE which itself was the natural outcome of scores of teams, tens of conferences and a relatively small number of in-season games.
Once it's all placed in a neat, formalized, smaller-sized, conference-oriented structure, it's no longer purely a fight among the teams with the best winning percentages.
In a way, it's like moving from PLEBESCITE DEMOCRACY to the ELECTORAL COLLEGE. You're competing within a smaller field for a localized ELIGIBILITY TICKET rather than against the entire field.
And of course this complicates things for ND to a certain extent as it has CHOSEN -- given its empahsis on its own IDENTITY -- to remain an ANOMALY within this more tightly RULES-BOUND, more FORMALIZED structure.
But then, ND still seems to have enough HEFT to manage these sorts of CARVE-OUTS.
There's going to be a g5 team outside the Top 12 almost every single year. And sometimes top 20.
All the P4 conferences have dropped their divisions as of 2024, so the days of an 8-4 Purdue team making the Big Ten CCG, for example, are probably over. They'll likely have two highly-ranked teams playing in most of these conference championships now.
Although I suppose the Big 12, lacking any marquee programs anymore, could end up with a champion outside the top 12.
