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For all the non-believers out there, hope has risen up in the form of a bowl “guru.” Jerry Palm of CBS Sports has projected the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame to be in the college football playoffs.
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Notre Dame would be the last team in, and would therefore be the #4 seed. That seeding would have the Irish facing the number one seed in the Oklahoma Sooners in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve.
The winner of that game would face the winner of the Peach Bowl, and in this case, Palm has the Clemson Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide seeded number 2 and number 3 respectively.
Notre Dame is no stranger to any of the other three teams, having faced Alabama in the 2012 Championship, played the Sooners in both 2012 and 2013, and of course last years epic game against the Clemson Tigers in a monsoon.
While Notre Dame has been slotted as a top 10 team in the preseason rankings, there are very few that actually believe the Fighting Irish can make the playoffs.
It would be the first time in the three year existence of the playoff that Notre Dame would make the final four. Last year, Notre Dame still had a really good shot before it lost its season ending game at Stanford- another in the “epic” category.
What do you think? Do the Irish have a legitimate chance at making the playoffs this year or will they stumble too many times? What will it take to make the playoffs? Is this kind of projection just ridiculous in mid-August?
Despite it all, Notre Dame is squarely in the conversation, and maybe that’s all we can hope for right now.