Notre Dame chants calling the Irish “overrated” miss the point, and the conversation swerves from football to theater

The “Notre Dame is overrated” chant has become a kind of recurring character in college football. On Saturday, it was trotted back into the spotlight again, attached to Notre Dame’s high-profile status and the kind of national expectations the program rarely escapes. The sharper critique this time is that the chant, taken literally, is less an evaluation of football than a reaction to the idea that Notre Dame must always be treated as a proven contender before it plays a snap.

What makes the noise feel especially off is the mismatch between the chant and what Notre Dame can actually be judged on in real time. Notre Dame, like every elite program, is built to reload, not to sit still. If a team has multiple standout skill players and coaches who can put them in roles that maximize matchups, that does not automatically translate into an “overrated” label. It just means the team enters the season with a public narrative that opponents and critics respond to, sometimes with more emotion than analysis.

The deeper issue is that the chant tends to collapse two separate questions into one. There is the question of whether Notre Dame’s résumé will hold up against the schedule, and there is the question of whether preseason attention inflates expectations. Those are connected, but they are not the same. Fans can feel justified in challenging a team’s ceiling, but turning that into a blanket dismissal before the games arrive can turn football talk into a branding contest, where winning is replaced by posture.

The argument also runs through tactical talk, because offensive identity is one of the few “answers” fans can point to quickly. In the broader discussion around Notre Dame, the “triple option” reference is a reminder that the program’s attention does not stay fixed on the same formation language from season to season. In modern college football, schemes that stress discipline and timing can look strange to casual viewers, and chants can become a shortcut to expressing discomfort rather than explaining why the offense would fail on third downs, in the red zone, or in late-game clock management.

To be clear, none of this guarantees Notre Dame will avoid criticism in the coming months. College football is violent to reputations, and one or two major games can reset the conversation fast. But when the chant outpaces the evidence, it tells you more about crowd psychology than about whether a roster constructed by coaches and evaluated by execution is actually good.

What to watch next is how the on-field product answers the noise. If Notre Dame’s offensive choices consistently create manageable reads, sustain drives, and protect big leads when the game tightens, the “overrated” chant will read like stubbornness, not insight. If they struggle in ways that are traceable and repeatable, then the criticism will at least have a football basis. Either way, the “chant-first” approach is unlikely to be as useful as the games, which is, in the end, the only scoreboard that matters.