It’s fast shaping up to be a great season for the Fighting Irish, with a recent AP preseason poll giving the team a much-deserved 12th rank. If anything, the news is a huge psychological boost for coach Brian Kelly’s wards, as this development practically ensures that all of Notre Dame’s opponents for the regular season are lower seeded. The team likewise took the same 12th spot in the Amway Coaches Poll.
It’s the Irish’s 55th time to rank in the preseason top 25 teams of the AP and it’s also the fourth most overall. It’s a huge upgrade in the rankings, given that the team started the past season unranked, before climbing up to 11th in the concluding AP poll after having finished with a 10-3 overall record.
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This development makes the Irish’s opening game versus the Michigan Wolverine the most important and certainly most anticipated by fans this season, as Michigan is ranked just two tiers lower at 14th. All in all, Notre Dame will get to play with four teams ranked in the top 20 of the initial polls within its three-month season between September and November: Michigan, Stanford (13th), USC (15th), and Virginia Tech (2oth).
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Again, the ranking is well-deserved for an Irish club that had a superb showing last year. But it nevertheless puts a lot of pressure on the team, especially because, in a huge way, this makes its first match versus closest-in-rank Michigan team essentially a must--win.
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