Joel Klatt states Notre Dame should be 'very nervous' sitting at No. 10 in CFP rankings

Following the release of the College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday night, FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt is sounding the alarm on Notre Dame. He thinks the Fighting Irish are in desperate shape at No. 10 overall in the rankings.

So dire, in fact, that he thinks the program could miss the playoffs altogether one year removed from a championship game appearance. He outlined how.

“I don’t see a scenario where Notre Dame stays in the playoff,” Klatt said on The Joel Klatt Show. “I think that they’re in a precarious spot and if I was a betting man, which I’m not, I would bet on Notre Dame falling out of the playoff. I know that that’s wild. And maybe something drastic or different can happen.

“Maybe BYU won’t be penalized and they’ll remain a buffer between Miami and Notre Dame. Maybe that’s the case. But, boy, it’s pretty easy and plausible to see where all the sudden BYU jumps them and Texas Tech doesn’t fall outside, or BYU falls behind Miami and then they’re in a direct comparison in a head-to-head matchup that they lost to Miami.”

Klatt outlined that two-way scenario that really doesn’t break in Notre Dame’s favor either way. The Big 12 title game will certainly cause some moves.

“Notre Dame going to 10 is massive,” Klatt said. “And I can just tell you right off the jump when I saw that I immediately thought to myself, ‘Irish fans, Notre Dame fans, you should be nervous.’ Notre Dame should be very nervous about being on the 10 line right now, because a lot of things are going to put them in a precarious spot.”

So what are these scenarios that Notre Dame has to be nervous about? Well, after Alabama leaped Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish are ever closer to the cut line for the playoff.

And more movement is bound to happen this weekend. It’s just a matter of where.

“Let me just start with No. 1,” Klatt said of Notre Dame. “Why did Alabama jump them after an unconvincing win at 5-7 Auburn? I don’t understand that. I don’t understand it at all. I guess it’s about resume, even though this committee the entire time has been using more of an eye test philosophy. I guess it’s resume, but 5-7 Auburn with an interim head coach and a quarterback that they’ve gone back and forth with, meanwhile ‘Bama needs a fourth-down conversion? I don’t understand that.

“Now, they did it and it has massive consequences, because a lot of these teams including Miami don’t have another game. So we’ve got all the data points that we want, that we need. Here it is. So they move to the 10 line and now Miami has only BYU in between them and Notre Dame. And as we know, Miami has a head-to-head victory over Notre Dame. That should make them nervous.”

To date, the CFP committee hasn’t used head-to-head as a tiebreaker of sorts between Miami and Notre Dame because Miami’s overall resume has been judged to be considerably weaker. The two programs have been separated in the rankings by a few spots, though that gap has been shrinking.

There’s another factor at play when it comes to that. That gap could shrink all the way.

“Then you’ve got the BYU conundrum. If BYU wins the Big 12 on Saturday over Texas Tech, they almost assuredly are going to jump in,” Klatt said. “They get the automatic spot, so they’ll be in the playoffs. They’ll be inside of the top 10. Then the question is the No. 4 team in the country, Texas Tech, going to fall all the way behind Notre Dame? Probably not. Probably not. I don’t see them falling that far, do you? I don’t, and in particular because we know the committee.

“Now even though last year’s committee was a different make-up, don’t you get the sense that they’re going to honor conference championship games? OK, Texas Tech was an 11-1, not a 10-2. So at 11-2, with an extra data point, we’re not going to penalize them and throw them out of the playoffs if they lose to BYU. I don’t think that’s the case. BYU’s only loss up to this point is at Texas Tech. So if BYU wins, Texas Tech will not fall below Notre Dame. Thus Notre Dame would be out. They would be out. There’s no more data points. So if you’re a Notre Dame fan, you have got to root hard for Texas Tech in that Big 12 Championship Game on Saturday.”

Even rooting for Texas Tech is a little dicey, though. Notre Dame probably wants a very, very close Texas Tech win. That could cause the committee to think twice about dropping BYU below Miami.

“Here’s the next thing. BYU loses. You’re like, OK, sigh of relief, we avoid that whole conundrum with the Big 12,” Klatt said. “But then, does BYU still stay above Miami? And in that case, I don’t know. I don’t know. Now, would they be penalized for the extra data point? Unknown. But I think they would at least move down a spot, maybe two. Maybe Texas and Miami jump BYU. Guess what that presents? A side-to-side comparison with Miami and Notre Dame. And, folks, you cannot unsee the head-to-head victory for Miami. You really can’t.”

So is Notre Dame just out of luck? That’s hard to say with any sense of certainty.

But it’s certainly an uncomfortable position to be in. Klatt summed it all up.

“So now you see the predicament that Notre Dame is in,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s a way that they can stay in, honestly, because if you’ve got the resumes next to one another, they’re similar. Record vs. CFP Top 25, Miami is 1-0. Guess what that one is? Notre Dame. Notre Dame.

“They’re both 10-2. Obviously the losses for Miami are not nearly as impressive as Notre Dame. And I understand and would agree that if we were to play that matchup on a neutral site this weekend I would pick Notre Dame. They would be favored by, I’ve seen hypotheticals, anywhere from 4.5 to 5.5 The would be 4.5- to 5.5-point favorites. I totally understand that. But we did see the game.”