Notre Dame Football: Final AP Poll Has Irish At #11
After almost 5 months, and 13 games, Notre Dame finishes its season ranked right where it started.
Now that all the games have been played, we all head back to the AP Top 25 Poll. This is the same poll that gets basically abandoned once the college football playoff rankings get released, is brought back to life now with the season finished and put back up on the shelf.
Final poll! Alabama a unanimous No. 1, then Clemson, Stanford, Ohio State and Oklahoma https://t.co/wLkboy2iHE
— AP Top 25 (@AP_Top25) January 12, 2016
Notre Dame finishes ranked at #11 which is the exact ranking the Fighting Irish started the season with back in August. So, after all the injuries and all the touchdowns and all of the final whistles, can Notre Dame fans cry foul?
Notre Dame lost to the #2, #3, and #4 ranked teams in the country by an average of 6 points a loss, and yet I feel as if the #11 ranking is far lower than the Irish actually deserve. Even with 3 losses and despite any manner in which those losses were garnered by Notre Dame, if we use that favorite unmeasurable measurable of the “eye-test,” you can’t sit there and tell me Iowa is better than Notre Dame.
In fact, when it comes to the teams ranked #5-#10, only the Houston Cougars would seem like a better team than the Irish. I’m sorry but I’m not sorry.
The beauty of all of this is that we will all barely remember what that ranking was five months from now. Notre Dame seems to be on the right track with Brian Kelly despite the vocal minority’s most hateful opinion. With another “quarterback controversy” waiting for the Irish this spring and fall, and still a tremendous amount of depth on the roster, Notre Dame will look to rise a bit more in 2016.