Personally, I love what this guy has to say.

So what's the best Catholic college that goes to bowl games?

Anonymous wrote:Since we're talking academic stats: Notre Dame leads all NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision institutions, along with Northwestern University, with a 99 Graduation Success Rate (GSR), as released by the NCAA on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.

https://fightingirish.com/notre-dame-leads-the-country-in-2025-ncaa-gsr-ratings/

lol just stop already. No one cares.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, ND made a deal to be independent and suck revenue off the NBC deal for years. They have been outmaneuvered by both the SEC and the Big-10. They should have made a move when the Pac-12 imploded. Humble pie is tough to eat.

LOL Notre Dame could announce tomorrow that they're ready to join a conference and every single conference in America would beg it to join them. It's not like they've closed any doors behind them. Get real.

Who said they did. Everyone is just more aware of the scheduling game they play.

Excellent article

Anonymous wrote:Since we're talking academic stats: Notre Dame leads all NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision institutions, along with Northwestern University, with a 99 Graduation Success Rate (GSR), as released by the NCAA on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.

https://fightingirish.com/notre-dame-leads-the-country-in-2025-ncaa-gsr-ratings/

A 99% GSR is great but is not some weird outlier, nor is it a mark of Notre Dame's overall academic quality for non-football students. Indiana has the top football program in the country and is a state school without ND's massive endowment, and it has a 92% GSR. Don't get me wrong, Indiana's football program is rich, that's a major reason their GSR is so high. But not as rich as Notre Dame. Money makes a huge different in GSR because it enables a program to throw money at players who are no longer even eligible to play in order to help them graduate in the required time (150% of standard college career, so 6 years for these schools). ND can afford to handhold even their least academic players to get them through to graduation. Which would be a big selling point for a football recruit (and especially his parents) because you are pretty much guaranteed a degree from a name brand university if you take your ND offer. But it's not really a mark of a school's overall academics -- it's much more about how hard the athletic program works to graduate athletes, something that is heavily incentivized by the NCAA (which is the reason schools even calculate this metric).

Here are recent-year GSRs for most of the top programs plus Stanford and USC for the sake of comparison. Yes, ND has the highest rate, but Alabama is at 96% so it's not like ND is some massive outlier. Also check out how Ole Miss was able to massively improve their GSR in recent years from a truly abysmal rate a few years back. That is not because Ole Miss is recruiting more intellectual football players. It is because they are prioritizing graduating football players by providing more tutoring, guiding players to the most doable majors, and holding their hands across the finish line if they have to. That's what ND does too. GSR doesn't really speak to the academic experience of the average student at any of these schools. It is purely an NCAA metric measuring the degree to which schools deliver on the promise of an education for student athletes. Many top programs do very well, most are more middling (NCAA wants programs to aim for 80% and above). Some, like Georgia, clearly don't care.

FYI, players who depart early for the NFL are generally exempt from GSR stats, so they don't really sway it one way or another. This is largely a metric for players who never play professionally making their education more critical to future success.

Indiana 92%
Ohio State 89%
Georgia 47%
Texas Tech 74%
Oregon 88%
Ole Miss 93% (huge leap for them, they used to report in 60s, this has been a major focus of the program in the last couple decades)
Texas A&M 73%
Oklahoma 79%
Alabama 96%
Miami 89%
Notre Dame 99%
Stanford 97%
USC 94%

Duke out Dukes in.

Anonymous wrote:CFP first word is college. Duke is an elite university competing with others that are not remotely close.

If you think that college football has anything to do with academics, you are mistaken. Perhaps, in the past such an argument could be made but not anymore. The players are in effect free agent employees who move from school to school based on three things. How much they will be paid, how much playing time they will get, and how much their chances of playing in the NFL will be increased. Duke is no different. College football has become a business with little or no concern for academic development either on the part of the players or the schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, ND made a deal to be independent and suck revenue off the NBC deal for years. They have been outmaneuvered by both the SEC and the Big-10. They should have made a move when the Pac-12 imploded. Humble pie is tough to eat.

LOL Notre Dame could announce tomorrow that they're ready to join a conference and every single conference in America would beg it to join them. It's not like they've closed any doors behind them. Get real.

Of course they would -- they'd bring in a ton of revenue because of their ravenous fan base. Guaranteed cash money. I also think other teams would relish the opportunity to play ND regularly because it's a good program that most teams never get to play. Which would be interesting. How good would they be in an actually competitive conference? If they had to play in a championship game against truly elite teams, or a competitive bowl game?

I still think ND would be a very strong football program in that scenario. In fact, I think it would likely make them better. But we'll never know because ND will never be willing to share their TV/sponsorship revenue. They choose money over football. The only thing stopping from everything they want -- respect, a chance to prove themselves every year in championship games against tough opponents -- is their own greed. Oh well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since this is a college board. Per 2026 US News rankings- Duke 7, ND 20, UMiami 64, JMU 151, and UAlabama 169. That says it all.

Bravo!!

Bravo? What does a USNWR ranking have to do with CFP?

This is not a sports forum. It's a college forum. ND is ranked higher than most colleges. That is what is being pointed out here. Who cares about football outcomes, other than it makes for fun weekends in the fall. You people are oddly obsessed. Hoping Jeff will lock this thread or move it to another forum.

Someone calling another person 'obsessed' on the DCUM college board of all places is pretty funny. - np

Since we're talking academic stats: Notre Dame leads all NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision institutions, along with Northwestern University, with a 99 Graduation Success Rate (GSR), as released by the NCAA on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.

https://fightingirish.com/notre-dame-leads-the-country-in-2025-ncaa-gsr-ratings/

CFP first word is college. Duke is an elite university competing with others that are not remotely close.

Anonymous wrote:Well, ND made a deal to be independent and suck revenue off the NBC deal for years. They have been outmaneuvered by both the SEC and the Big-10. They should have made a move when the Pac-12 imploded. Humble pie is tough to eat.

LOL Notre Dame could announce tomorrow that they're ready to join a conference and every single conference in America would beg it to join them. It's not like they've closed any doors behind them. Get real.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since this is a college board. Per 2026 US News rankings- Duke 7, ND 20, UMiami 64, JMU 151, and UAlabama 169. That says it all.

Bravo!!

Bravo? What does a USNWR ranking have to do with CFP?

This is not a sports forum. It's a college forum. ND is ranked higher than most colleges. That is what is being pointed out here. Who cares about football outcomes, other than it makes for fun weekends in the fall. You people are oddly obsessed. Hoping Jeff will lock this thread or move it to another forum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:weak schedule. navy, bc, stanford, purdue -if they want to be in the playoff and not be in a conference they have to play the top teams.

Or at least more good teams.

Also they need to actually win the games against the good teams they play. They didn't have a single impressive win this season. They ran up the score against extremely weak teams and lost to the two comparable teams they played. That's it.

This is one of the reasons they should have played a bowl game against BYU, simply to prove that they could beat a decent team. Had they played BYU and won, this would have at least demonstrated that their strong record wasn't entirely due to a weak schedule. As it stands, the best argument you can make for the quality of ND's team this year is that they *almost* beat Texas A&M. And this is a problem entirely of their own making.

Sometimes other teams have cushier schedules but it's not their own creation -- they play in conferences with weaker opponents and get lucky with some scheduling. ND's weak schedule, every single year, is something they dictate for themselves. And never more so this year when they chose not to play BYU after also losing games to Texas A&M and Miami. I guess the team didn't feel it had anything to prove? Sounds like a team that isn't going to the playoffs.

ND, for once, appropriately rated.

Um, they won 10 in a row, one of which is #16 USC. The losses were by 1 point and 3 points (total of 4 points between 2 teams). I agree, the schedule sucked, but they were considered to be a very good team this year that could have competed very well in the CFP.

ND lost to Miami. Nothing to see here.