Josh Pate reacts to Notre Dame skipping bowl season amid CFP snub

There is a lot of frustration in South Bend. That’s understandable after getting snubbed for the College Football Playoff. That frustration was so extreme, in fact, that Notre Dame quickly made the decision to skip out on bowl season entirely.

Notre Dame isn’t the only school skipping a bowl this year, but it is a premier brand doing so after a major frustration. That’s what makes their situation unique and led to Josh Pate being very critical of the move during a Monday morning appearance on Get Up.

“I hate it with every fiber of my being,” Josh Pate said. “I’m not going to go as far as to say I don’t understand it, though. I think I do understand it, but from a competitive standpoint, it is a fact that there are seniors on that team who thought they had at least one more football game in their careers, whose careers are now over.”

Beyond that, there is a practical reason why this could hurt Notre Dame. The Irish are going to miss out on 15 practices by skipping the bowl. Those practices can be key for young players going into next season.

“The other part of that is, since the beginning of time, bowl games, postseason play has mattered for your true freshmen that you’re getting ready to play next year. That just got tossed on the scrap heap,” Pate said. “Not for the same reasons that like your Iowa States of the world aren’t playing — their coach left and whatnot. This is just, ‘We didn’t make the Playoff so we’re not gonna play.’ I hate it, but it is what it is, I guess.”

Josh Pate wasn’t the only one critical of Notre Dame in the immediate aftermath of this decision. Paul Finebaum also made it clear that he wasn’t happy with the Irish, even calling them cry babies for skipping out on a bowl game.

“They got it right, and the crying from Notre Dame is quite frankly embarrassing. Everything Notre Dame has done since the moment this was announced is really beneath a great institution that should stand for principles. Instead, they cried. They didn’t get their way, and then they said, ‘You know, we’re going home. We’re taking our ball like a five year old on the playground by not going to a bowl game.; Why did they get it right? Because Notre Dame had very little to show on its resume. They’re not in a conference. That’s their own fault. They think they’re too good to be in a conference,” Finebaum said.

“And had they joined the ACC, which they, by the way, are a member of, in every other sport, they would have played for the ACC championship game, they would be in the playoff today, and they wouldn’t be a bunch of sniveling cry babies, and really, quite frankly, in my opinion, the laughing stock of college football.”

The College Football Playoff and bowl season are going to move on without Notre Dame. Still, it’s safe to say the Irish will do whatever they can in their power to avoid getting left on the outside looking in again.