Notre Dame makes Top 10 in first College Football Playoff rankings
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Notre Dame Fighting Irish have secured a spot in the very first 12-team College Football Playoff rankings.
The 13-member committee released its first set of projections Tuesday night, putting the Fighting Irish as the No. 10 seed. If the college football season were to end this week, Notre Dame would travel to sixth-seed Penn State for the first round of the playoffs in late December.
This is the first of six total College Football Playoff rankings. The final list will be released Sunday, Dec. 8.
The Irish have made the College Football Playoff two times prior — in 2018 and 2020. The Irish’s first appearance in the playoffs, they lost to No. 2 Clemson in the Playoff Semifinal at the Cotton Bowl, 30-3. Two years later, Notre Dame lost another semifinal game to No. 1 Alabama, 31-14 in the Rose Bowl.
The Fighting Irish have lost only one game — an upset loss to Northern Illinois during week two of the college football season. Since then, Notre Dame has handled business against the likes of Purdue, Louisville, Georgia Tech and Navy.
The Fighting Irish are currently ranked No. 10 in the AP Top 25 poll.
Notre Dame is the second team in the state of Indiana to make the new 12-team format. The Indiana Hoosiers were ranked two spots higher at No. 8, but would be the ninth-seed if the season were to end this week. The undefeated Hoosiers would play the 10th-seed Tennessee Volunteers in the first round.
The First Round of the College Football Playoffs is scheduled to take place across the country with one game Friday, Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. and the remaining three games throughout Saturday, Dec. 21. The lower seed of each matchup would host.
Winners of those four games will go on to play the four conference champions in the playoff quarterfinals, which will be spread out across four traditional New Years Six bowl games. The two semifinal matches will be at the Orange Bowl Thursday, Jan. 9 and the Cotton Bowl Friday, Jan. 10, with the National Championship happening in Atlanta on Monday, Jan. 20 at 7:30 p.m. ET.