And lost to Clemson who, are not what they used to be but are still talented.
Held USC to 20 points and just flat out beat the shit out of them
Beat a decent NC State team by 3 scores
And when they’ve played lesser teams, they blow them out
I realize that as a younger person around here I’m in the minority, in that I don’t hate ND, but they are ranked about where they should be. Somewhere in the teens.
If you don’t believe me, make a top 25 and see how many teams are actually 8+ wins coming into the week, it’s not many.
Lots of programs wish they were a joke then. 9/10 wins almost every year since 2010. They aren’t elite but easily a top 15 program over the last 15 years
In reality, they shouldn’t even be trying to rank teams until week 4 or 5 anyway. Preseason hype is the worst judge of character there is aside from maybe A&M’s Coach Hiring Committee.
Average preseason ranking over the last 11 years, 12.36. Sounds about the right number to me, unless you consider 12 to be an elite ranking?
They have started top 10, 5 times, once coming off 12 wins, once coming off 11 wins and 3 times coming off 10 wins. Their top ten rankings were 10 in 16, 9 in 19, 10 in 20, 9 in 21, 5 in 22. 16 and last year they were absolutely overrated because of the year before but 19, 20 and 21 they were very deserving of being a top 10ish team.
I 1000% agree about not ranking teams preseason, should wait until conference games start at the earliest.
On the bright side. We just about beat Alabama with a QB that only completed 31% of his passes. That tells me we aren’t far off from being competent again.
One of my best friends is a ND fan, so they are one of the many teams that a pull for. I may be nuts but I kind of have a internal “rooting interests” rankings in my head, some have reasons, some are just fucking random, but no matter the game, I’m rooting for someone. Also I always have sports reference open on my pc, so all that info I posted was readily available within 5 minutes. I actually looked it up in search of if I am wrong, and they have been ranked higher than I recalled. It’s a fascination for me that people look at ND and will say “they’re always overrated” or “they play a terrible schedule” both are true and untrue, depending on the year in question, just like almost every other program.
In some ways, ND(Penn St too) is the inverse of Texas. ND typically will beat the teams they should but can’t match up with the big boys and get killed by the Bama’s and Georgia’s of the world. Texas, meanwhile, will often play with the big boys, 2019 LSU for example, but then inexplicably lose multiple games they have no business losing.