Notre Dame fully disrespected in new post-spring Top 25 rankings from Josh Pate

If you tend not to take Josh Pate very seriously like me, kudos to you for being wise beyond your years (however old you are.) And while Pate isn't someone who should really ever be taken seriously, his latest post-spring Top 20 rankings are still something that Notre Dame Fighting Irish fans should point and laugh at as they begin to circulate on social media on Monday.

It's not even that Pate has the Irish ranked No. 6, even though they're among the best teams in the country, according to almost everyone else in the world of college football. It's that while he's giving no respect at all to Marcus Freeman and company, he's giving entirely too much credit to some other teams that have no business being ranked ahead of the squad from South Bend.

Pate has Notre Dame sitting at No. 6, which is bad enough, but who does he have at No. 1? That would be none other than the Clemson Tigers. An ACC squad that lost to Georgia by 30, lost to South Carolina and Louisville, and always seems to be good but hasn't been great in a long, long time.

The rest of Pate's Top 10 has Texas at No. 2, Penn State at No. 3, Alabama at No. 4, LSU at No. 5 (that's two teams that didn't make the playoffs last year ranked ahead of Notre Dame), and then the Irish. Seven is Oregon, Ohio State at No. 8, Florida at No. 9, and Oklahoma at No. 10 in this rather silly post-spring lineup.

Even if the analyst wanted to argue that Marcus Freeman's squad is as low as it is because of a question mark at quarterback, is Alabama (which lost Jalen Milroe to the draft this year) not in the same boat? And aren't they starting behind the eight ball more with a coach under fire and a team that missed the tournament?

How about Florida being just a few rungs below the Notre Dame football team? How about Oklahoma? If Josh Pate has done us a favor with this list, he showed no one should listen to his words. So, we owe him a debt of gratitude in that regard.