Since the beginning of the CFP playoff rankings, Miami has been behind Notre Dame. At one point, they were 8 spots behind despite having the same record. That was in the week 10 playoff rankings.
Miami, in the next 4 games, got better and returned to the form they showed early in the year. They gradually started making up ground on the Irish until this final selection show, where they were side by side, and Miami got he nod due to their week 1 win over Notre Dame.
If you are a Notre Dame fan, you can’t question the logic of the decision. Side by Side, two teams same record played one, lost and one won. The tie break is determined by a game on the field. Nothing is cleaner or makes more sense.
Is there really a world where two teams 10-2, having played each other with several common opponents, where the loser of a H2H would be behind? Of course not, not by any rational reasoning.
Sorry, Notre Dame, your gripe shouldn’t be with Miami, but with Alabama’s inclusion. I’ve seen a lot of complaints from the Notre Dame camp, but they are almost exclusively about Miami and the ACC, not Alabama and the SEC, even though the Tide haven’t looked like a playoff caliber team since late October.
Still, this wasn’t even the biggest snub of the last 3 years, as FSU’s 2023 injustice is the bar to which all playoff snubs should be compared. We said it yesterday, and it bears repeating.
What if a team won its conference championship game by double digits over a top 15 tm and was in the playoffs before the game, was undefeated, went 2-0 against SEC with another top 15 win and dropped out afterwards?
Now that would be wild, oh wait
Yes anything is on the table.
— Jeff or Jeffrey Fann (@TalkinACCSports) December 7, 2025
The CFP Committee screwed up, though, as NBC Reporter Nicole Auerbach says in her article. The problem is not with Miami’s inclusion, but the process and transparency of it.
So, where do we go from here? College football is a great sport with a bad process to select and seed its postseason participants. And unless something changes with the actual procedural steps and the selection criteria, it’s impossible to trust. It’s a group of people picking teams they like — based on vibes— behind closed doors.
And that’s a problem.
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