AP voters throw the book at the Notre Dame Fighting Irish for their last-minute top 10 loss against the Miami Hurricanes
Notre Dame receives some unwarranted disrespect following opening season loss to the Miami Hurricanes
Head coach Marcus Freeman and the Notre Dame program got their 2025 college football season kicked off with a disappointing 27 to 24 loss to the Miami Hurricanes on Sunday night. With months of hype and high expectations, the Fighting Irish losing the season opener was a bit of a buzzkill. While it was disappointing, it is never good practice to overreact on either side.
In the latest Associated Press Top 25 Poll, Notre Dame fell to the No. 7 spot in the latest ranking. Ohio State, Penn State, LSU, Georgia, Miami, Oregon, Texas, and Clemson were the programs that were ranked ahead of the Fighting Irish. You never want your team to lose, or drop down these rankings, but Notre Dame is still in a solid spot to make a run if they are able to right the ship.
At the end of the day, you lost to a top ten football team on the road in game one. This wasn’t a disaster of a performance. This wasn’t a loss to Stanford, Marshall, or Northern Illinois. You lost to a good football team.
The members who voted for the AP Poll had their votes announced this week. For the most part, the ballots made a lot of sense. There were, however, two separate voters who didn’t even have Notre Dame inside their top 25 teams. Those two were David Briggs (sports journalist for the Toledo Blade) and former Florida Gator and NFL Pro Bowl defensive end Kevin Carter. The latter is now a pro and college football analyst for CBS Sports.
When you look back at Briggs’ preseason poll, he had Notre Dame ranked as the No. 5, and Miami at No. 11 overall. Carter, in comparison, had the Fighting Irish all the way up at No. 3. He also had the Hurricanes at No. 14. That means that both had each team ranked inside the top 15 teams in the country heading into game action.
Why the drastic fall?
So despite both teams being ranked by both Briggs and Carter, a 3-point loss on the road is enough to completely fall out of the top 25 rankings? That seems like an extreme overreaction. It almost feels like both simply forgot to include Notre Dame in their ballot, but regardless, it is a pretty poor look. There just isn’t much of a strong argument to have that type of take, especially after one game.
In Briggs’ ranking, he has SMU, South Florida, and James Madison all in his top 25. Yet, no Notre Dame. There seems to be some questionable decision making for each voter. Let’s hope the Irish go on a bit of a run, and it makes the rationale look even sillier and impulsive.
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