Eric Boggs 
Notre Dame Draft
By Eric Boggs from The OHIO Podcast
In college football, having talented players is super important. Teams want to recruit the best players, help them get even better, and sometimes those players go on to play in the NFL. How well a college does this can tell us a lot about how strong their football program is.
One college that’s really exceptional at this is Notre Dame. They’ve been churning out NFL players for a long time and have a big reputation for it. They’ve had more players go pro than any other college, even beating out their rival USC by a bit.
Over the years, Notre Dame has had some top picks in the NFL Draft, with five players being chosen first overall. But it’s been a while since that happened—1972 to be exact. Still, Notre Dame keeps sending players to the NFL, with at least six players getting drafted in a single year six times in the last ten years. In the 2021 NFL Draft, they tied with Georgia for the third-most players drafted with nine. And in the most recent draft in 2024, seven Notre Dame players got picked.
In total, Notre Dame has seen 532 of its players get drafted into the NFL, more than any other college. This year, offensive lineman Joe Alt was their big pick, going fifth overall to the Chargers. He’s the highest-drafted Notre Dame offensive lineman since 1969. It was also the first pick for Jim Harbaugh, the Chargers’ coach. It makes sense he’d pick a great blocker like Alt to start off his time with the team. The last time the Chargers picked a Notre Dame player in the first round was in 2019.
Even though USC is right behind Notre Dame in the number of players drafted, they didn’t catch up this year. Both schools had seven players drafted over the weekend. Notre Dame’s consistency in producing top-tier NFL talent is truly remarkable.
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