CJ Carr knows the 1st CFP rankings don't mean a thing for Notre Dame

The first College Football Playoff rankings of the season were released this week, but if you asked the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, they would seem like they couldn't care less. When Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr joined SportsCenter shortly after the rankings were released, he said he didn't even tune into the release show and had only heard just minutes before that the Fighting Irish were No. 10.

Carr said the team, in general, was not very locked in on the rankings and where they would land because these are simply just the first rankings. Notre Dame feels their focus needs to be on its next game, which is against a pesky 7-1 Navy team coming up this weekend.

Notre Dame football's CJ Carr knows a playoff spot right now means very little

"The focus for our team right now is beating Navy," Carr said. "We know if we focus too much on the things that don't matter, then the things that do matter will slip away."

It seems like Carr is saying that the first CFP rankings don't matter, and in reality, he isn't wrong. The first CFP rankings will almost certainly look very different from the final rankings and the actual selection for the College Football Playoff.

Since dropping the first two games of the season, Notre Dame has had no choice but to focus on the next game up because one more loss would almost certainly take them out of the running for the CFP this season. Every game this season, since those first two losses, has been a playoff game for the Fighting Irish.

So for Carr and the rest of the team, they truly can't pay attention to what the media is saying or even the selection committee. They have to focus on the next opponent on the schedule in order to keep this win streak going and allow them to stay in contention to have a chance to get back to the National Championship.