Notre Dame Football: Irish will start the season ranked #5 in the Coaches Poll

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish will start the 2022 season with one of its best preseason rankings in the coaches poll over the last 25 years. The AFCA Coaches Poll has Notre Dame at #5 in its preseason poll.

The Irish will have an even brighter spotlight on them to start the season, as they travel to Columbus to take on the #2 Ohio State Buckeyes in the season-opener.

Other Irish opponents ranked in the top 25 are:

#4 Clemson Tigers
#15 USC Trojans

Notre Dame’s opponents that also received votes:

#29 BYU Cougars
#33 North Carolina Tar Heels

So... not an overly tough schedule when it comes to ranked teams — but more than worthy enough from a top-end point of view. What it’s not is a schedule that Irish fans can go to the mats as one of the toughest this year — it’s just not.

Preseason rankings are just preseason rankings — and I know — they should probably be outlawed by congress and have no bearing on the playoff rankings. And yet... here we are in the second week of August talking about it because it’s what we have. Notre Dame is a top-five team that is 13 spots higher than the Texas Longhorns — a team that got a first-place vote.