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NCAA Football Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Notre Dame Rated Correctly In First College Football Playoff Rankings

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Following the release of the first College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday, Notre Dame’s deep fanbase was shocked to see them ranked 10th in the country. However, after looking further into the selection committee’s process of ranking the teams and going down the list of teams that are ranked higher than Notre Dame, it’s clear that the Fighting Irish were ranked properly.

The main reason that Notre Dame received the ranking of 10th from the selection committee this week is due to its strength of schedule. The quality of its opponents so far this season has been very easy compared to other top teams. Currently, none of the six teams Notre Dame beat this year are ranked in the AP top 25.

The nine teams in front of the Fighting Irish, such as Mississippi State, Florida State, Auburn, Ole Miss, Oregon, Alabama, TCU, Michigan State and Kansas State, have at least beaten one current top 25 team this season.

In addition, it’s important to realize that this is the first of several rankings. The 12 members of the selection committee will release a new list every week from now until the end of the regular season. Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly recently stated that he was putting zero thought into the results of the first rankings because there are so many games left on the schedule, including this week against Navy.

There are also a couple of factors that could help the Fighting Irish move up the rankings in future weeks. The team still has two games left on their schedule against top 25 teams, such as No. 14-ranked Arizona State (Nov. 8) and No. 25-ranked Louisville (Nov. 22). The hope for Notre Dame is that these two teams stay in the top 25, and have other future opponents build better records.

Also, several of the teams slotted ahead of the Fighting Irish in the first College Football Playoff rankings will actually play each other down the stretch, thus guaranteeing some movement of teams across the board. In fact, six of the current top nine teams in the initial rankings will play at least one game against another current top nine team.

Notre Dame was definitely ranked correctly, but it’s also far too early for each team, or their fanbases, to start worrying about the rankings with many critical games still to be played.

Nick Wilder is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickCWilder and add him to your network on Google

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