The Irish are ranked high, high enough to be seriously considered as one of the few teams that could actually finish as the College Football Playoff champion.
Fox Sports RJ Young is one of those people, as his pre-season college football tiers were announced today.
It was heavily SEC dominated in tier one, as Alabama, Texas A&M and Georgia with Ohio State were the four teams at the top.
Tier two included the Irish along with Utah, Michigan State and Baylor.
The third tier had one more team than the previous two and had Arkansas, Clemson, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and USC.
There are plenty of arguments to be had about this tiers,
but for Notre Dame being in the second does make sense.
A brand new head coach, Marcus Freeman, a new starting quarterback, Tyler Buchner,
and an extremely difficult season opening game, Ohio State, seemingly gave Young a bit of a hesitation putting the Irish in the top group.
It will be fun to look back on this after the regular season and championship games are played to see how accurate Young was.