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We’re two weeks into Notre Dame’s 2020 football season and three weeks into 2020 college football as a hole. We started it by thinking there would be no Big Ten football, only to find out last week that we would indeed be watching the Big Ten this fall.
In these strange times, how pollsters have gone about ranking teams who are playing and not playing has been interesting while also at times confusing.
That all said, ESPN has released their latest College Football Power Rankings and after a 52-0 destruction of South Florida, they’re thinking highly of Notre Dame, even with Big Ten teams being accounted for.
Here’s what they said about No. 5 Notre Dame:
Nobody can beat up on the Fighting Irish for not racking up enough style points in Week 2. After a so-so performance in its season-opening win over Duke, Notre Dame looked every bit the part of a national title contender on Saturday in a 52-0 dismantling of South Florida, even without multiple defensive starters. One of the most impressive things about the Irish thus far is that they have a wealth of impact players on both sides of the ball. It’s hard not to like the balance that Brian Kelly has created.
In what I think will become one of the story lines of the week as well as the season is how much Notre Dame’s depth has stuck out. At the top the Irish might not be loaded with future first and second round draft picks like we’ve seen before, but top to bottom the level of talent is just as great and seemingly deeper than at any point since the early 1990’s.
It’s hard for me to put all that stock in beating up an undermanned South Florida squad, but then again for years and years we saw Notre Dame play with it’s food in games like that and struggle mightily against mediocre foes.
As for the rest of the poll – although excited to see Notre Dame ranked in the top five, it’s hard for me to put too much credit into it when the top ranked team in it is yet to play a down of football yet this fall.