Why Notre Dame’s Off-Season Praise Means Absolutely Nothing

It seems like everywhere you turn this college football off-season, Notre Dame is receiving major praise.

If one day it is quarterback CJ Carr being listed as a Heisman Trophy favorite, the next it's Notre Dame being picked by a so-called expert as the favorite to win the national championship in the "way too early predictions".

Sure, it's different for Notre Dame fans to see this level of praise thrown towards its program in an off-season as it hasn't happened with any consistency for decades. However, and more importantly, none of it matters whatsoever.

Josh Pate Calls Notre Dame His Early Preseason No. 1

Josh Pate of a variety of different networks, recently called Notre Dame his top-ranked team at this point in the preseason. As you can tell in the video above, plenty of Notre Dame naysayers got on his case for being so high on Marcus Freeman and the Fighting Irish.

The following isn't meant as a knock on Pate, but just show how little value preseason projections like this matter.

Last year, Pate predicted that Alabama would beat Oregon in the national championship before any games were played. He also had Texas and Penn State in the national semi-finals.

Again, I'm not trying to jump on him by any means. Making preseason predictions isn't easy and that's why if you do it extremely well, there are opportunities for you to make a significant amount of money on various betting sites.

It's all to say that, yes, Notre Dame seems to have everything a national championship contender needs to be in the picture, but that several other teams make a case as well.

Brett McMurphy the Latest on the Notre Dame Hype Train

If the preseason hype train wasn't going to be rolling enough already for Notre Dame, it only grew on Tuesday when Brett McMurphy of On3 made his "way too early" predictions.

McMurphy seeded his College Football Playoff projection for next season, but didn't pick each game. However, he did note that he has Notre Dame winning the national championship.

NEW: Way-Too-Early College Football Playoff Prediction via @Brett_McMurphy🏆

Do you agree? 🤔

More: https://t.co/jWF4LyO60X https://t.co/Xf5ZNWQuIx pic.twitter.com/kc52EQ2Rn3
— On3 (@On3) February 18, 2026

Again, very cool for Notre Dame fans to see the Irish in this light in February. That hasn't been the case since Lou Holtz was around, and that genuinely only adds to the excitement ahead of spring football and this fall.

However, McMurphy had a "way too early" prediction last year of Georgia winning the national championship. Instead, the Bulldogs lost in the Sugar Bowl for the second-straight season, and again didn't make the national semi-finals.

Nick Shepkowski's Quick Takeaway:

There was a time I was good at predicting college football in the preseason.

OK. The truth is that happened once because I read The Sporting News College Football Preview Magazine back in 2003 and I got behind how high it was on LSU. Since then, unless it was one of Nick Saban's teams at Alabama, I don't think I've predicted a preseason national champion correctly - and picking Alabama at that time was about as safe and uninteresting of pick one could make.

These guys have jobs to do and there is a reason they do "way too early" and preseason predictions each year - because viewers and readers eat them up.

I say all that to say this: It's better that Notre Dame is being considered for a seat at one of these tables than not. It adds to the excitement of the year and can seemingly only help recruiting the next wave of athletes.

However, it means nothing in the grand scheme of things, except that perhaps the Fighting Irish faithful will be nicer to these two in their respective comments sections than they may have been previously.

Remember how Penn State was the media darling of last off-season? And how it went through a coaching change this past year?

It's more than OK to get excited about Notre Dame in 2026 as it should be a fantastic year - but even the experts don't get these things right at nearly the clip you'd think.