Did the College Football Playoff Committee just set a trap door for Notre Dame to fall right out of the field?
After weeks of propping up Notre Dame’s feeble résumé to make it seem like the Irish were a lock for the 12-team field as long as they finished 10-2, there is legitimate drama surrounding the playoff’s most divisive contender as we head into the final weekend.
In a bit of a surprise Tuesday night during the penultimate ranking show on ESPN, the committee moved Alabama up to No. 9 and dropped Notre Dame to No. 10. That’s crucial because, with the ACC and American Conference champions almost certainly finishing outside of the top-12, the last at-large spot will go to the team ranked No. 10.
Why is that potentially bad news for Notre Dame?
It all comes down to, of all things, the Big 12 championship game between Texas Tech and BYU.
The Red Raiders are ranked No. 4 and seem to be a playoff lock regardless of what happens. BYU is No. 11 and would get an automatic bid with a win, giving the Big 12 a second playoff team — and knocking Notre Dame out of playoff position.
But here’s where it gets really interesting.
Say Texas Tech wins, as expected (the Red Raiders won the first meeting 29-7). That would presumably knock the Cougars down in the rankings among other two-loss teams. And if the committee’s ordering of the two-loss teams looks like it did this week, that means the final two teams to evaluate for the last spot would be either Notre Dame or … Miami.
So far, the selection committee has resisted a direct either/or comparison between Notre Dame and Miami because the Irish have been ranked several spots ahead. But if that becomes the inevitable choice for the final playoff spot, would they not have to default to Miami’s 27-24 win over Notre Dame in Week 1 as the tiebreaker to jump the Hurricanes into the final at-large spot?
“The head-to-head is one data point the committee will use,” selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said Tuesday. “It’s obviously easier to use when the teams are back-to-back [in the rankings] as opposed to when they’re separated by a team or two or three as has been the case.”
Uh oh, Irish.
At the very least, the committee understands the theatrical aspect of what it just did. One way or another, Notre Dame vs. Miami for the final spot would be the most explosive controversy in the 12-year history of the CFP.
Or perhaps the committee has finally realized, as it should have the entire time, that Notre Dame was getting way too much credit for going 10-2 against a schedule without much heft.
No offense to the Irish. It’s a fine football team with explosive playmakers on both sides of the ball that has won 10 games in a row by an average margin of 29.7 points.
The issue is who those 10 games were against, including 2-10 Purdue, 2-10 Arkansas, 2-10 Boston College, 3-9 Syracuse, 4-8 Stanford and 7-5 NC State. The only wins against decent competition for Notre Dame were against No. 16 Southern Cal, 9-2 Navy, 8-4 Pittsburgh and 8-4 Boise State.
That’s … not great.
Notre Dame might pass the eye test, but based purely on résumé, the Irish are probably ranked several spots above where they should be.
Irish fans and head coach Marcus Freeman would argue they should not pay a huge penalty for the close road loss to Miami and a 41-40 loss at home in Week 2 against Texas A&M, a game that came down to a fourth-down touchdown pass by the Aggies in the final seconds. And they’re correct that two September losses to good teams by a combined four points shouldn’t be disqualifying for a 12-team playoff.
But the schedule just didn’t fall in Notre Dame’s favor this year. There weren’t enough opportunities the rest of the season to log signature wins. And it may just work out this year that the committee will have to decide between the team it has rated as better all season and the one that — like it or not — prevailed in a head-to-head matchup.
A cynic might even argue the committee flip-flopped Notre Dame and Alabama in the rankings this week to set up this exact scenario. With Alabama playing Georgia in the SEC championship game, there’s now a buffer for the Crimson Tide to stay in the field even with a loss.
If BYU wins the Big 12, their job is pretty easy. If Texas Tech wins, it likely comes down to two teams that played in Week 1, and thus a big national debate about which school is more deserving of the final spot.
And the history of the committee suggests it would go to Miami.
Over the course of its existence, the CFP committee generally sticks to the script. At the end of the day, it doesn’t make bold assumptions and leans on what it has seen with its own eyes.
This explains, for instance, why even though the committee has the latitude to penalize Ole Miss for Lane Kiffin’s departure based on its protocols, it isn’t doing that. Ole Miss, in fact, moved up a spot to No. 6 this week.
“It’s impossible for us to evaluate what the impact is because we don’t have a game we can compare Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin versus without him,” Yurachek said. “Without that data point, it really did not become part of our thought process.”
Think about that principle through the lens of the Miami-Notre Dame debate.
The committee would be well within its rights to say their Week 1 game isn’t particularly relevant to where the two teams are now, and that they just believe the Irish are a better team.
But history says that’s not what they’re going to do. Instead, they’re going to look at Notre Dame’s best win against No. 16 USC and compare it to Miami’s best win.
Which is against … No. 10 Notre Dame.
In other words, the Irish should be very nervous. That doesn’t mean they’re out. It doesn’t mean they’re in. But the security they might have felt by being ranked several spots ahead of Miami a few weeks ago has evaporated.
Now all eyes will be on the Big 12, where one result will probably kick Notre Dame out of the field and the other result will force the Irish into a head-to-head comparison with a team it lost to on the field.
To be fair, this is the discussion the committee should have been having all along, given the magnitude of that result for both Notre Dame and Miami. Now it’s arrived.
And it’s going to make for spectacular drama on Sunday.