Newsstand: Notre Dame football was among unluckiest Power Five teams in 2023
Team Rankings, a popular site for college football hierarchy charts and comparisons, has a metric called “College Football Luck Rankings & Ratings.” According to the site, which combines offensive and defensive efficiencies to match a team’s actual record to what it should be, Notre Dame was one of the unluckiest teams in the nation in 2023.
The Irish came out of the regular season with a -1.1 rating. There were only 24 FBS teams in the country with a mark of -1.0 or worse. The following teams had the worst luck among Power Five programs. Interestingly, only three of them, including the Irish, posted a winning regular season winning record. Rating and record are in parenthesis.
- TCU (-2.9; 5-7)
- Washington State (-1.5; 5-7)
- Kansas State (-1.5; 8-4)
- Arkansas (-1.5; 4-8)
- Texas A&M (-1.4; 7-5)
- Pittsburgh (-1.4; 3-9)
- UCF (-1.3; 6-6)
- Cincinnati (-1.3; 3-9)
- Indiana (-1.2; 3-9)
- Nebraska (-1.1; 5-7)
- Notre Dame (-1.1; 9-3)
For reference, Washington had the best luck in the country with a rating of 2.6. The Huskies are 12-0 and can punch a ticket to the College Football Playoff with a win in Friday night’s Pac-12 Championship Game. Every one of the top 13 luckiest teams in the country won at least nine games.
Notre Dame tweets of the day
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Quote of the day
“It’s a big step. At halftime, we all came together. We just had to really stick together in this. It was a great environment. Lots of fans for Tennessee. So just sticking together was super important especially when we’re down. We just kept chipping away one possession at a time.”
— Sophomore guard KK Bransford on the Irish’s comeback win over Tennessee
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