How Notre Dame’s football rivals are ranked according to the fans

Very early in our rivalry debate about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish it was quite clear that there were many MANY opinions out there. While I strongly voiced my thoughts and reasons, I also recognized that this whole debate comes down to personal choice for any slot not named #1 Rival the USC Trojans.

I put out a very unscientific set of polls to provide a fan ranking, and OFD commenter mmurph28 gave it a much more scientific polish.

Here’s the rivalry poll excel document if you want to mess with it.

The second part below was an attempt to restrict points by requiring a 5% share. The idea was to remove any effect of troll votes (such as USC as our # 8 or BC as #1...) It honestly didn’t change much, but I didn’t update it with the final data.

The Navy apologists obviously put the bat/goat signal out on the interwebs.

As a refresher, this exercise gave free reign as to how these teams were ranked. Personally, I’m not sure how we can look at a team as being a rival of such stature as #2 when the Irish are scheduled to play the Michigan Wolverines again until 2033 (Brendan’s unborn child will have just become a teenager).

But it is what it is. Thanks for your participation, and thanks to mmurph28 for tallying up all the info.

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