14 days until Notre Dame football: Talking Associated Press Poll numbers

BlueandGold.com will release a countdown article highlighting a significant Notre Dame football statistic every day until the 2024 season opener at Texas A&M at 7:30 p.m. ET on Aug. 31 in College Station, Texas. Today, there are 14 days until the Irish and Aggies kick off at Kyle Field.

There has been a lot of chatter about Notre Dame football and the Associated Press Poll since the preseason rankings came out on Monday. The Fighting Irish came in at No. 7, just like they did in the preseason coaches poll a week prior.

It’s been since the 2020 season that Notre Dame finished with a ranking of No. 7 or better in the AP Poll. In the first two seasons of the Marcus Freeman era, the Irish have ended up with a worse postseason AP Poll ranking than that of the preseason.

Last year, the Irish came in at No. 14 in the final AP Poll of the 2023 season.

There’s something to be proud of in Freeman having Notre Dame ranked at all at the end of his first two seasons in charge of the program; the Irish have now been ranked at the end of the season seven years running. That’s the best stretch of consecutive appearances in the final AP Poll of the season since having a run of 11 in a row from 1964-74. The Irish won three national championships in that span.

The goal now for Freeman is to get Notre Dame on the cusp of competing for national titles, an end goal only truly attainable for the Blue and Gold twice in the last decade. The Irish reached the College Football Playoff in the aforementioned 2020 season and did so as well in 2018. Both times, even after qualifying as one of the four best teams in the country, Notre Dame finished with the No. 5 ranking in the AP Poll. After getting trounced by Alabama in the 2012 national championship game, Notre Dame finished the season ranked No. 4.

The last time Notre Dame had a No. 3 or better next to its name in the final AP Poll of a season? 1993. It’s been since, of course, 1988 since that number was a No. 1.

So, No. 14 is all fine and dandy only because it continued a streak that has now become the second best of its kind for the program in the last 50 years. But smaller numbers would also keep the same streak going, and that’s what the Irish have their eyes on.

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