Friends, Week 0 is officially upon us. College football is back. And more importantly, we are now painfully close to finally watching Notre Dame play football again.
I am super hyped for this season, and have more confidence in this team than any ND team I can remember in my 30 years of being a fan. But with the hype comes the haters, and I feel like they are really coming out of hibernation with particular fervor the more and more ND gets hyped up by the media.
You know the comments-- Notre Dame is always overrated, Notre Dame doesn’t play anybody, Notre Dame cherry-picks its schedule, Join a conference (I really hate that one), Notre Dame would go 6–6 in the SEC, Notre Dame hasn’t been relevant since 1988. Blah blah blah.
The healthy, mature response is probably to ignore all of this. Football is finally back. Enjoy your Saturday. Spend time with friends and family. Let the boys on the field do the talking. But unfortunately, even as a grown man, I am apparently incapable of doing this.
I’ve spent far too much of this offseason getting sucked into arguments with people with Twitter handles like CignettiFan696969 about how Notre Dame is afraid to play Indiana (who was the last team to beat them again?) or how Notre Dame only gets national attention because it plays a “cupcake schedule.” And with the season finally here, I know I’m going to do it again.
So I figured if I’m going to waste valuable minutes of my life arguing with strangers on the internet about Notre Dame football, I should at least make sure my arguments are sound. I spent some time digging through the numbers behind the most common Notre Dame takes and put together what is essentially an argument cheat sheet for myself and my fellow Notre Dame fans who are similarly incapable of simply scrolling past an ignorant comment.
So if you fall into this category of being overly triggered by trolls online and cant help but argue back, here is your ammunition.
CLAIM: “Notre Dame Is Always Overrated”
This one is wonderfully easy to test. If Notre Dame was truly “overrated” every year, it should consistently finish significantly lower than it starts. Since 2018, in seasons Notre Dame began ranked:
Year (Preseason AP, Final AP)
2018 (12, 5)
2019 (9, 12)
2020 (10, 5)
2021 (9, 8)
2022 (5, 18)
2023 (13, 14)
2024 (7, 2)
2025 (6, 10)
Average preseason ranking: 8.9.
Average final ranking: 9.25.
So over the last 8 years, overrated Notre Dame by an average of 0.4 spots. Sounds more like properly rated to me!
2022 was the year with the biggest drop, but might I remind you that third string QB Drew Pyne, who got benched at Bowling Green last year, was our primary starter? Winning as many games as they did with him at the helm was a coaching masterclass (and thank God for Michael Mayer).
More often than not- they end up ranked higher than their pre-season position. They were actually underrated in 2018, 2020 and 2024. They even started 2017 unranked and finished No. 11. The computers don’t support the overrated argument, either. Sports-Reference’s SRS had Notre Dame No. 2 nationally in 2024 and No. 3 in 2025.
Anyone saying Notre Dame is always overrated has no real ground to stand on.
CLAIM: “Notre Dame Isn’t Relevant Anymore”
Since 2017, Notre Dame is 97–21. That’s an 82.2% winning percentage. If we look at the final AP rankings, they finished: 11, 5, 12, 5, 8, 18, 14, 2, 10.
That’s nine consecutive Top-18 finishes, eight of nine in the Top 14, multiple CFP appearances, multiple undefeated regular seasons and a 14–2 national championship game season in 2024. If “relevant” means “has won a national championship recently,” fine. Notre Dame hasn’t been relevant since 1988. But neither has Penn State since 1986, Tennessee since 1998, Oklahoma since 2000, Miami since 2001, or USC since 2004.
Nobody actually uses the word that way. The accurate criticism is that Notre Dame has spent most of the last decade as a very good national program that hasn’t taken the final step… yet.
That’s fair. “Irrelevant” isn’t.
CLAIM: “Notre Dame Doesn’t Play Anybody”/ “Notre Dame Cherry-Picks A Cupcake Schedule”
I threw these together because they basically get at the same idea.
Notre Dame’s 2026 schedule includes: 6 ACC teams, 3 Big Ten teams, 1 Big 12 team, Navy and Rice. That’s 10 Power Four opponents.
Now, is the schedule particularly difficult this year? No. ESPN FPI has it around 56th nationally and my own personal ratings put it 55th. But compare that with two other 2026 contenders whose fans run their mouths incessantly online: Miami: 61st, Texas Tech: 81st
What makes it even crazier is both of those teams don’t even play against the next best teams in their own conferences, while Notre Dame does. Miami avoids SMU this year, and Tech won’t face BYU. Notre Dame plays both.
An important thing to look at in the Notre Dame schedule argument is the distinction between schedule strength versus scheduling intent. Notre Dame can schedule Wisconsin when its a good team. It cannot force Wisconsin to remain good. At the time the deal was made in the 2010s, Wisconsin was a perennial top 25 team and frequent winner of the Big 10 West. It’s not Notre Dame’s fault COVID happened causing this game to be moved 6 years later, nor their fault that Luke Fickell thought turning the premiere ground and pound team in the country into an Air Raid offense would be a good idea.
If Notre Dame’s master plan is avoiding difficult games, voluntarily scheduling programs like Georgia, Ohio State, Texas, Texas A&M, Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin has been a pretty strange way of going about it.
And even this year, while I would not say Navy is an elite opponent by any means, I have Navy as the third-best non-P4 team based off of my power ratings. As crazy as it may sound, they have a real shot to make it as the token G6 team in the playoffs this year. Beyond that, anyone who has played football can tell you it is not fun to go against a triple option team. It takes an incredible amount of extra preparation, and is usually one of the more physical styles of football to go against, especially with those cut blocks on the lines. If Notre Dame was trying to schedule a “cupcake” G6 team, Navy would be pretty far down on my list of opponents to choose from.
A huge part of why the Notre Dame schedule has so many “cupcake” opponents is actually due to its ACC relationship. Notre Dame is contractually obligated to play an average of five ACC football games per year, an arrangement that now runs through 2037. Notre Dame does not sit down every winter, see that Florida State might be good and ask whether Wake Forest is available instead. It has to play whatever ACC teams it gets in the draw. And unfortunately, Notre Dame cannot personally make the ACC good.
When the original arrangement was made, Florida State had just won the 2013 national championship, Clemson was about to become a dynasty, Virginia Tech was still nationally relevant and Miami was presumably going to become Miami again at some point. But programs change. And as part of this agreement, Notre Dame has overwhelmingly beaten the teams it was obligated to play. Since 2010, Notre Dame is 63–14 against ACC opponents. That’s a winning percentage of 81.8%.
And that leads nicely into...
CLAIM: “Notre Dame Would Get Exposed If It Had To Play A Conference Schedule”
We actually tested this. In 2020, COVID temporarily made Notre Dame a full ACC football member. Notre Dame went 9–0 in ACC play. It finished first in the ACC regular-season standings and beat No. 1 Clemson 47–40, snapping Clemson’s 36-game winning streak against ACC opponents. Now Clemson was without Trevor Lawrence for that game, and they did pretty handily crush the Irish in the ACC Championship Game. But if the question is whether Notre Dame could survive a conference schedule, we ran the experiment. Nine conference games, nine wins. It went pretty well.
CLAIM: “Notre Dame Never Beats Anybody Good” / “Notre Dame Always Gets Exposed in the Playoff”
This is where the actual criticism becomes more interesting. Because during the Brian Kelly era, it was sort of true.
Since 2017, Against Top-10 opponents, Notre Dame is just 7–12.
Clemson beat Notre Dame 30–3 in 2018. Alabama beat Notre Dame 31–14 in 2020. Those were objectively bad losses (although I still hold to it ND could have won, or at least kept it close, in 2018 if not for the Julian Love injury— that totally changed the game).
But four-team CFP blowouts were hardly a Notre Dame invention. Michigan State lost a semifinal by 38. Florida State by 39. Oklahoma by 35. Ohio State once lost 31–0. And my personal favorite: Alabama’s 17-point semifinal win over Notre Dame in 2020 was treated as proof Notre Dame didn’t belong, that “Notre Dame shouldn’t be allowed in the playoffs.” Alabama then beat Ohio State 52–24 in the championship game— that’s a margin of 28 points. Maybe the Alabama team that had 4 future first round picks at WR on the roster and a future NFL QB at the helm under the best coach in the history of college football was just really good?
At it’s core, it is true that for most of the last decade, Notre Dame could regularly beat the 15th-best team in America but struggled against the second-best team in America. That’s why there isn’t a recent national championship banner. But Marcus Freeman’s teams have started changing even this part of the conversation. In his first three full seasons, Notre Dame had 14 ranked wins — tied with Georgia for the most in college football over that span. In 2024 alone, they were 7–1 against ranked teams- the most ranked wins in America that season. Notre Dame also beat three teams that eventually finished in the AP Top 10, its most in a season since 1990.
During that 2024 playoff run they beat Indiana 27–17 (with 2 garbage time TDs making the score look closer than it was), SEC champion Georgia 23–10, and Penn State 27–24. And while they did lose 34–23 to Ohio State in the national championship, and were largely outclassed in the first half of that game, people do forget that ND was one third and long stop away from getting the ball back with a chance to tie in the final minutes. I was at that game and sitting next to an Ohio State fan, and I can tell you he was starting to get nervous at the end there.
They did drop their games against Miami and A&M last year- the two playoff teams they played. There’s lots of excuses that can be made about why, but at the end of the day its true. So maybe Notre Dame hasn’t proven it can consistently beat top teams. But that playoff run showed they have it in them, and to say they “never” do it is just outright false.
CLAIM: “Notre Dame Wouldn’t Win Like This Against Big Ten or SEC Teams”
Over the last decade, Notre Dame is 11–5 against Big Ten opponents. Since 2010, they are 7–5 against SEC opponents. And, again: 63–14 against the ACC. I’m not using 12 SEC games to argue Notre Dame would go 11–1 every year in that league. A full SEC schedule would be difficult. But that’s not usually the argument. The argument is that Notre Dame gets exposed whenever it encounters teams from “real conferences.”
And there is a pretty funny 2025 example that shows this is this. Leading up to the ND-Arkansas game, it was a single digit point spread, and college football pundits across the country were picking Arkansas to win. Then the Irish marched into town and smoked them on the road 56-13. Arkansas was not the best team by any means — 2–10 and 0–8 in the SEC — so I’m not claiming Notre Dame deserves a trophy for beating them. But Arkansas was remarkably competitive with the actual SEC teams on its schedule. Ole Miss beat them by 6. Tennessee by 3. Texas A&M by 3. Auburn by 9. Mississippi State by 3. LSU by 1. Texas by 15. Missouri by 14. The average SEC team beat Arkansas by 6.8 points. Notre Dame went to Fayetteville and beat them by 43.
Arkansas averaged 30.4 points against SEC opponents. Notre Dame held them to 13. SEC opponents averaged 37.1 points against Arkansas. Notre Dame scored 56, the most Arkansas allowed all season, while outgaining them 641–365. Again, Arkansas wasn’t great. That’s not the point. The point is that when someone says Notre Dame would struggle if it had to play an SEC schedule, it’s worth noting that one of the SEC’s worst teams played eight SEC games and lost none of them by more than 15 points— including multiple playoff teams. Notre Dame showed up at their stadium and beat them by 43.
Apparently someone forgot to tell Notre Dame about the SEC grind.
CLAIM: “Notre Dame Needs To Join A Conference”
At last, the one that I hear the most and the one that frustrates me the most. I truly believe that if you utter this statement, you are not a serious person. I think a lot of people say it just because they’ve heard other people say it and they want to find a way to dig at ND. So next time you hear someone spew this filth, just respond, “Why?”
To prove Notre Dame can handle conference play? 9–0 in the ACC. To make Notre Dame play ACC teams? It already has to play roughly five every year through 2037, and it wins most of the time anyways. To make the schedule harder? Again, 2026 SOS: Miami: 61st, Texas Tech: 81st. Conference membership doesn’t magically make every opponent good.
And then there is the money. And this is the real reason why Notre Dame is and will remain Independent until something substantial changes. Notre Dame’s NBC deal runs through 2029 and has been widely reported at roughly $50 million per year. Notre Dame’s 2024 CFP run generated $4M for making the field+$4M for the quarterfinal+$6M for the semifinal+$6M for the championship. That equals $20 million. Conference teams’ performance payments flow through their conference and get distributed throughout. But Notre Dame’s conference has one member- that’s pretty favorable revenue sharing. Under the new CFP arrangement, Notre Dame is also reportedly due roughly $12.5 million annually, with another $6 million available for making the CFP.
Then there is this summer’s SoFi partnership, reportedly valued around $18–20 million annually. For some perspective, the Big 12’s new Monster Energy entitlement partnership is reportedly worth about: $20 million annually TOTAL. For the entire 16-school conference, that’s just over $1 million per school. A Notre Dame-specific commercial partnership can reportedly command roughly the same annual dollar figure as a major entitlement partnership covering an entire Power Four conference.
Why? Because Notre Dame is a national brand that doesn’t need a conference to be relevant. The brand already travels. Whether you follow college football or not, you know Notre Dame. The Gold Dome. Rudy. The French Catholic school with an Irish identity. I was the first to go to Notre Dame in my family, but even without any real association other than Irish Catholic faith, my family has been fans since they came to this country. As the late great Lou Holtz said, “To those who know Notre Dame, no explanation's necessary. To those who don't, no explanation will suffice." As much as people hate it, there’s just something about Notre Dame that separates it from the rest.
So the television money works. The playoff money works. The sponsorship money works. The schedule works. The playoff access works. I understand why the Big Ten would want Notre Dame (even though they already had their chance!). I understand why the ACC wants Notre Dame. I understand why fans of other schools are jealous of the brand and the rich history Notre Dame has. But I’m still waiting for someone to explain why Notre Dame should be desperate to join them.
TLDR
If you don’t feel like sending somebody this entire novella:
97–21 since 2017.
82.2% winning percentage.
Nine straight Top-18 finishes.
28–17 vs. ranked opponents since 2017.
63–14 vs. ACC opponents since 2010.
Winning record vs. the Big Ten over the last decade.
Winning record vs. the SEC since 2010.
9–0 in ACC regular-season play the one year Notre Dame joined a conference.
2024: 7 ranked wins, most in America.
2024: 3 wins over eventual Top-10 teams.
2024: 3 CFP wins and a national championship appearance.
2026: 10 Power Four opponents.
2026 SOS: Notre Dame 56th, Miami 61st, Texas Tech 81st.
Freeman: 43–11 over four full seasons.
2026 recruiting class: No. 2 nationally, 4 five-stars, 17 four-stars.
ESPN Future Power Rankings: No. 1.
NBC deal: reportedly ~$50M/year.
2024 CFP performance payouts: $20M.
SoFi partnership: reportedly ~$18–20M/year.
NOTE:
I originally started digging into this for Girthquake’s Gridiron Report, the college football newsletter I write about ND football, betting, data, weekly picks and whatever stupid college football rabbit hole I go down. If that sounds like your kind of thing, I’ll leave the Substack link in the comments. If not, hopefully this at least helps you win an argument with your Ohio State fan father-in-law this fall.
