TheCollege Football Playoffselection committee decided to move Miami ahead of Notre Dame at the last minute.
After keeping the Hurricanes behind the Fighting Irish for weeks, the people in charge of the 12-team bracket moved the Hurricanes ahead of Notre Dame on Sunday and into the postseason.
The Fighting Irish fell out of the playoff entirely as Alabama stayed in the fielddespite losing the SEC title game to Georgia on Saturday. The Crimson Tide are the first three-loss team to make the field as an at-large.
Notre Dame had been ahead of Miami for every iteration of playoff rankings this season despite losing to the Hurricanes in Week 1. The two teams finished with the same 10-2 record and neither played on conference championship weekend. It would have made much more sense for Miami to move ahead of Notre Dame in the penultimate rankings on Tuesday if the committee was going to make this decision. Instead, the committee waited until the final set of rankings to invoke Miami's win over the Irish.
Why? CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek said that the committee didn't compare Miami and Notre Dame against each other like it did Saturday night and Sunday morning because BYU was in between them in the rankings. Notre Dame was at No. 10 on Tuesday night, BYU was at No. 11 and Miami was at No. 12.
"The first in that was we felt like the way BYU performed in their championship game, a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion was worthy of Miami moving ahead of them in the rankings," Yurachek, the Arkansas athletic director said on ESPN. "And once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungry for of Notre Dame and Miami and you look at those two teams on paper and they're almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, their results against their common opponents but the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head-to-head."
Yurachek said that the committee waited so long to compare Miami and Notre Dame head-to-head because of where Miami started the rankings. While Notre Dame was in the top 10 of every CFP ranking until Sunday, Miami was at No. 18 in the first set of rankings on Nov. 4.
Miami's inclusion into the field means the ACC did not get left out of the playoff.
Miami didn't win the ACC title or even play in the ACC title game. The 10-2 Hurricanes lost out on a five-way tiebreaker for second place in the conference to a five-loss Duke team. The Blue Devils took down Virginia in the ACC championship game on Saturday night but ended up ranked behind five other conference champions in the CFP rankings.
The field is made up of the five highest-ranked conference champions and seven at-large teams. American champion Tulane, Big Ten champion Indiana, Big 12 champion Texas Tech, SEC champion Georgia and Sun Belt champion James Madison got the automatic berths. JMU is the first Sun Belt team to ever make a College Football Playoff.
The first round features two regular-season rematches. Tulane, which lost 45-10 to Ole Miss in September, will visit the Rebels again. Alabama, which lost to Oklahoma at home in November, will visit the Sooners for the second straight season.
Given the way the committee handled the rankings, Notre Dame has every right to feel aggrieved. Whichever of Miami, Alabama or Notre Dame would have had a legitimate case if it was left out of the playoff. But Notre Dame has to feel especially salty given the way it was treated by the committee in the weeks leading up to the final rankings.
Miami did not play Duke or Virginia during the regular season. Neither did Notre Dame. The only team on either Miami or Notre Dame's schedule that played on conference championship weekend was Boise State. And the Broncos won the Mountain West title over UNLV on Friday night.
Notre Dame beat Boise State by three touchdowns. In theory, the win over the Broncos was strengthened between Tuesday and Sunday. Instead, the committee decided to change its mind days after both Miami and Notre Dame's seasons ended.
College Football Playoff field
First-round byes
No. 1 Indiana (13-0)
No. 2 Ohio State (12-1)
No. 3 Georgia (12-1)
No. 4 Texas Tech (12-1)
First-round games
No. 12 James Madison (12-1) at No. 5 Oregon (11-1)
No. 11 Tulane (11-2) at No. 6 Ole Miss (11-1)
No. 10 Miami (10-2) at No. 7 Texas A&M (11-1)
No. 9 Alabama (10-3) at No. 8 Oklahoma (10-2)
Full College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings
1. Indiana (13-0)
2. Ohio State (12-1)
3. Georgia (12-1)
4. Texas Tech (12-1)
5. Oregon (11-1)
6. Ole Miss (11-1)
7. Texas A&M (11-1)
8. Oklahoma (10-2)
9. Alabama (10-3)
10. Miami (10-2)
11. Notre Dame (10-2)
12. BYU (11-2)
13. Texas (9-3)
14. Vanderbilt (10-2)
15. Utah (10-2)
16. USC (9-3)
17. Arizona (9-3)
18. Michigan (9-3)
19. Virginia (10-3)
20. Tulane (11-2)
21. Houston (9-3)
22. Georgia Tech (9-3)
23. Iowa (8-4)
24. James Madison (12-1)
25. North Texas (11-2)
