SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The brick arches of Shields Hall, Notre Dame’s palatial new football facility, are supposed to make this 162,032-square-foot sports shrine mesh with the rest of campus. The numbers printed on the interior walls on either side of the entryway are a reminder of why Notre Dame football stands out.Stand in the lobby, turn to face the entrance, look up. To the east of the glass double doors are the years of the program’s first seven national championships, won by legendary coaches Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy. To the west are the other four titles, the work of Ara Parseghian (twice), Dan Devine and Lou Holtz. Below 1988 there is an intentional blank space, not just for Notre Dame football’s next national championship year, but enough room for multiple.Full disclosure: In my previous 25 years on the Notre Dame football beat, I’ve never entered a season believing the program would win it all, adding to a championship history that has felt more like a yoke than a platform. A school in love with its past never quite understood what it meant to embrace the present. Or it just didn’t want to. You’ve watched the results. I’ve covered them. Notre Dame has played for two national titles this century. The first was a public flogging: 42-14 at the hands of Alabama in 2013. The second was a tease, a 34-23 loss to Ohio State in January 2025. Yes, Notre Dame has seen the finish line before, but how close it has come to reaching it has been an optical illusion.This feels different, and that’s why I’m going to write the following sentences for the first time.This is the year. Notre Dame will win the national championship.Considering the national noise around Notre Dame this summer, you may consider me late to the hype party. Maybe that’s because I’ve never wanted an invitation. I covered the final season of Bob Davie, a couple weeks of George O’Leary, three seasons of Tyrone Willingham, five years of Charlie Weis, a decade-plus of Brian Kelly and now Marcus Freeman. In that time, the program has not been the platonic ideal of college football excellence.Right now, Notre Dame is.Why Notre Dame is the staff's prediction to win the national titleDavid UbbenIt may not have the best coach in the sport, but it has the best fit for this place. It pays its assistants at market-setting rates. It’s leading the facilities race instead of playing catch-up. The Irish have the money to retain everyone they want from the previous year’s roster, sign multiple five-star high school prospects and call most of their shots in the transfer portal.A year ago, I asked athletic director Pete Bevacqua what Freeman needed to take the last step after that run to the national championship game. He basically shrugged his shoulders.“We have what we need,” Bevacqua said. “Are you gonna play in the national championship game every year? No. Unfortunately, there’s too many good teams. But we’re gonna keep knocking on that door.“We have to win national championships in football.”Then Notre Dame kept pumping resources behind its head coach — a new contract, a new football building, another eight-figure boost in player spending. If they had become a durable contender by the start of the 2025 season, the Irish have now moved beyond utilitarian or practical. Notre Dame is built to win the whole thing, which is what Freeman was hired to do in the first place.The brick-and-mortar factors favor Notre Dame. So do the ones tracked on financial spreadsheets. But the intangibles feel like they’re trending Notre Dame’s way, too. The way last season ended — with a College Football Playoff snub, followed by opting out of bowl season entirely — and the way Freeman has weaponized it matter. The program got a month’s jump on preparing for this season, with more winter conditioning, quicker postseason surgeries and a better offseason program. One assistant told me before spring practice that Notre Dame’s roster looked so good that it resembled a team reporting for preseason camp in August, not for offseason drills in March. Notre Dame was already going to have a lot working for it the season, but 2025’s heartbreak created a momentum toward Sunday night that’s deeper than “Leave no doubt” or the other mantras Freeman wants to apply to this season.Honoring the late Holtz, the last coach to win a national title, with helmet stickers before a season that could end that 38-year drought almost feels karmic.Then there’s the roster, with a future first-round pick at quarterback, a defense seemingly without holes and a freshman class rated as Freeman’s best but might not see much playing time. Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa could be one of the best linebackers in the country, but he might not start.It’s not that Notre Dame won’t have questions to answer this season. It doesn’t have a power move on offense when it needs one, like Riley Leonard running QB Power or just handing the ball to Jeremiyah Love and getting out of the way. The receiving corps seems better but isn’t elite. The offensive line might need a couple games to find its groove. None of these things should be confused with the insurmountable challenges of facing peak Nick Saban, defending Trevor Lawrence or covering Jeremiah Smith (though that last one might happen again).Notre Dame is built to go the distance in a season when the race feels wide open among the sport’s elite.It’s worth remembering that Bevacqua was a Notre Dame fan before he was the athletic director. He was also a fan before becoming a student here. He’s seen the same seasons you have. Some great ones. A lot of middling ones. Some wretched ones. This one feels different than almost everything else.“I would say the last time I was as excited about this season was my freshman year at Notre Dame (1989),” Bevacqua said. “We had just come off being national champions. We had Tony Rice coming back, (Michael) Stonebreaker. We had that unbelievable backfield. That team, my freshman year, yeah, we lost that game to Miami, but boy, we were tearing through teams. And I remember coming here and showing up for my freshman year thinking, this is gonna be a really fun year.“I’m that excited again.”Basically, Bevacqua has felt a season like this one coming on before.I never have. Until now.