Notre Dame football among highest risers in Preseason AP Poll

Earlier on Monday, Notre Dame football fans, followers and players found out where they will start the season when the AP released its preseason Top 25. Where they are starting out is hardly a surprise, but it does give them a nice jump on things.

Having been inside the Top 10 of several unofficial polls, the Fighting Irish are now ranked No. 7 in AP’s preseason poll. Compared to where they finished the 2023 campaign, that’s one of the biggest jumps in today’s polls. In fact, only Ohio State had a bigger jump.

The Notre Dame football team finished last season ranked 14. Now that they’re ranked No. 7 in the AP Preseason Poll, that's a seven-spot leap. Only Ohio State, which finished 10th and is second in this poll, had a bigger jump.

Notre Dame football starts the season in playoff pole position

While it’s nice that the Irish are starting off with such a big jump from their 10-3 finish inside the Top 15 last year, it’s not nearly as important as where they get to kick off the season from in 2024. After all, the Top 12 teams will be in the playoffs.

To be quite honest, had the Irish somehow managed to be place outside of the Top 20 and maybe even outside of the Top 15, they’d need to do some climbing. And that wouldn’t have been that easy with their soft regular season schedule.

At the moment the Irish have three opponents also ranked in the AP Preseason Poll. The Florida State Seminoles are ranked 10th, the Texas A&M Aggies are 20th and the USC Trojans are 23rd. 

If all goes right, the Irish will almost certainly knock Mike Elko’s boys out of the Top 25 when they face off in Week 1. It seems reasonable to believe that USC is going to find themselves outside hte Top 25 by the time the season is over.

That leaves Florida State as the only team that should still be in good standing when Notre Dame football faces off with them later in the season. Of course, anything can happen, and all three teams might be long gone from the rankings. All of this is to say that the Irish need to back up its No. 7 Preseason AP Poll ranking.