“Overwhelming shock and sadness. Like a collective feeling that we were all just punched in the stomach.” Those are the words from Notre Dame’s athletic director, Pete Bevacqua, after Notre Dame was left out of the second-ever 12-team college football playoff. Notre Dame was the first team out, and Brigham Young University was second. The outcry from the Irish fandom was loud and everywhere. The biggest criticism was that 10-2 Alabama made the playoffs, while 10-2 Notre Dame didn’t, even though Notre Dame had been ahead of Miami for much of the year.
There are a couple of reasons I don’t like Notre Dame’s reaction, and I’ll go into all of them here, but the main reason is this: they are ten and TWO. The instant the final whistle blew in week one against Miami (a game they lost 27-24), they lost all credibility to complain.
Then, not only did they lose week one to Miami (a team that made the playoffs), but the next week they lost to Texas A&M (also a team that made it). Their other opponents outside of Miami and A&M went a combined 55-63 in the regular season (meaning they only won 47% of their games), and only three Power 4 teams they played had a winning record.
In week seven, Indiana played Oregon in a top-five-ranked matchup, Oklahoma played Texas in a game with serious playoff implications, and Notre Dame played the powerhouse NC State Wolfpack, who went 7-5 in the regular season. They beat one team that ended the year ranked (USC), and they were ranked 16th. One ranked win and a whole bunch of nobodies is not exactly conducive to making your case to the all-knowing College Football Playoff Committee. When they eventually explained their reasoning, the head-to-head matchup did indeed matter.
“Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for,” CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said. “You look at those two teams on paper, and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against common opponents.” What a good point and reasoning. If you want to be included among the 12 best teams in the country, you have to beat some of the twelve best teams in the country. Notre Dame had the 44th-best strength of schedule in the country (according to ESPN’s College Football Power Index). Out of the three teams that would really boost their resume (Texas A&M, Miami, and USC), they were only able to win of those. USC also ended the season well outside the playoff contention at 9-3. You know who isn’t complaining about the playoffs? Indiana. Ohio State. They had two perfect regular-season records, and the committee ranked them accordingly. If you want to be selected 100% of the time, win the games on your schedule.
Notre Dame also responded to being “snubbed” in a perfectly well-adjusted and mature manner- not playing in the bowl game they were invited to. What a childish thing to do.
Even if the team voted not to play in it, don’t you think the cheerleader on the sideline would have liked to know she was cheering her final game? When BYU and Georgia Tech (the teams that played in the bowl Notre Dame was supposed to) played, at least all of their people knew it could be their last. What about the drum major who worked his hardest to climb the ranks in the band, and now doesn’t get a good emotional sendoff because he thought they would play in a bowl? I’m sure they weren’t happy to hear that.
When Georgia didn’t make the playoffs in 2023, they didn’t back out. They played their bowl game, whooped FSU 63-3, and Kirby Smart used the presser to talk about the playoff system.
The way Notre Dame handled not getting their way is akin to a person with the emotional maturity of a third grader, not a multimillion-dollar brand with fans internationally. They need to suck it up and accept that they lost to the only two resume building teams they played, and actually play in the bowl game.