#10 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (7-1) VS Navy Midshipmen (2-6)

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are 7-1 and currently ranked #10 by the college football playoff committee. With four games left in the regular season, that record and that ranking is usually good enough for a serious run at the college football playoff. The problem for Notre Dame this week, is that a game against Syracuse or Maryland or UCLA would mean 100 times more than Saturday’s matchup against the Navy Midshipmen.

Yes... after a year of bliss, we have arrived at DO YOU EVEN KNOW THE HISTORY BRO — DO YOUR RESEARCH week for the Irish, and we ain’t talking about vaccines. It’s silliness to continue to play a wookie life debt game while none of the other 130 institutions involved in the Naval V-12 program ever felt that they had to do the same. This was all fine in the pre-playoff era 9I suppose), but now with the ACC tie-in, it’s just another wasted spot on the schedule (which is absolutely more Notre Dame’s fault than Navy’s fault). Hell, the game was never romanticized on the level they do today until the Charlie Weis era — which coincidentally was the era that saw the 43 game winning streak end.

All you need to know about the value the college football world places on this game is from 2019. #16 ND beat #23 Navy 52-20, and the Irish didn’t budge in the rankings (week 12 to week 13). So mutual respect is all you get this week, because unless Notre Dame loses — no one gives a crap at this point in the season. Perhaps a compromise would be that this game is annually the first game of the year — at least its non-impact won’t come during the crucial time of the year.

Anyways...

UND.com

Everything you need to know about Notre Dame and Navy this week can be found in the stream below.