ESPN has released their annual college football future rankings for the outlooks of teams over the next few years. They take rosters, current and future into the equation as well as coaches and their staffs.
Good news for Notre Dame fans is that they appeared in the rankings top ten.
Bad news for Notre Dame fans is that they’re three spots behind where they were a season ago.
Worse news for Notre Dame fans is that the Irish barely check in the top ten, coming in at ninth overall.
Now how did ESPN get to this conclusion and who does Notre Dame fall behind?
Based off of evaluations of quarterbacks, the offense as a whole as well as the defense, ESPN ranks each time by those groups while factoring in coaching stability as well.
Ninth ranked Notre Dame checks in with the seventh overall group at quarterback, ninth best offense and 13th ranked defense. A couple of things to take away from that:
- Based off recruiting numbers Notre Dame is in an incredibly strong place at quarterback compared to about 95% of the country. That gap between the top five or so percent is significant, here’s to hoping Tyler Buchner, who factors into this, helps bridge that gap.
- How much does ESPN like Notre Dame’s 2020 offensive recruits? Must be a ton with the offense out-ranking the defense in this system, especially when you factor in recent results.
- Clark Lea being sought after as a head coach counts against him but that should be a similar thought for almost any program with a proven coordinator. Brian Kelly’s potential retirement and Tommy Rees’s inexperience at the coordinator spot were also held against Notre Dame here.
The rest of the top ten went as follows:
1. Clemson
2. Ohio State
3. Alabama
4. Georgia
5. LSU
6. Oklahoma
7. Florida
8. Oregon
9. Notre Dame
10. Penn State
If you’re looking at the tiers of college football the last couple of seasons this plays out about as perfectly as you could imagine. Notre Dame could perhaps have an argument to be ranked above Florida and Oregon but recruiting numbers have favored the others more recently.
Whatever the case, it’s a good, strong showing on this future outlook. However, it’s still the same five or six schools up top that the rest of the college football world continues to try and chase down.
