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Mario Cristobal delivers clear message on Miami's CFP case vs. Notre Dame: 'We won the game'

by: Alex Byington7 hours ago_AlexByington

Miami head coach Mario Cristobal is done campaigning. Last year, Cristobal put on the full-court press in an effort to get his 12th-ranked Hurricanes into the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff field.

Of course, that lobbying effort fell on deaf ears as Miami dropped to No. 13 in 2024’s final CFP Top 25 rankings on Selection Sunday and missed the Playoffs after losing two of its final three regular-season games. This year, the Hurricanes once again find themselves on the Playoff bubble after landing at No. 12 in Tuesday night’s penultimate rankings — two spots behind No. 10 Notre Dame, which Miami beat 27-24 in Week 1 of the regular season.

Only, this time around, there really is no debate according to Cristobal. The ‘Canes should be in the 2025 College Football Playoffs due to their head-to-head victory on the field, especially if the CFP’s final at-large bid comes down to a decision between Miami (10-2, 6-2 ACC) and the independent Fighting Irish (10-2).

“It’s kind of interesting, I felt like a year ago we had to almost campaign and debate things a little bit because everybody had some valid points (for inclusion),” Cristobal told CBS Sports’ Danny Kanell on Friday. “But this year, I think it’s just a matter of continually presenting the facts, right? At the end of the day, it’s two teams with the same record, common opponents, identical metrics, and we played the game. We played the game, and we won the game. We won the game.

“And when you take a deeper dive into all the other stuff, it just continues to point at that we have the opportunity, respectively, to present our case to be the best and most deserving should things shake out a certain way tomorrow.”

The great debate leading into this season’s College Football Playoff revolves around how much weight the CFP selection committee puts into Miami’s Week 1 victory over Notre Dame. Outside of absolute chaos breaking in this weekend’s conference championship games, a majority of this year’s 12-team field appears relatively set, with the expectation the current Top 8 teams are securely Playoff-bound.

That number expands to nine depending on the result of Saturday’s SEC Championship Game between No. 3 Georgia and No. 9 Alabama. And with the Playoff’s 11th and 12th seeds expected to go to the winners of the American Conference on Friday night and Saturday’s ACC Championship — both of which will go to teams ranked outside the Top 12 on Selection — there appears to be one remaining bid up for the taking at No. 10. And based on Cristobal’s comments Friday, there’s no question he believes that final Playoff bid belongs to Miami.