Pete Bevacqua on Notre Dame missing CFP: We had one of the most dominant 10-game runs in college football history

Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua held a presser Tuesday and claimed the Irish had one of the most dominant 10-game winning streaks in college football history. It was to further explain his point of shock that Notre Dame was left out of the College Football Playoff.

“As I said on Sunday, we felt we did everything we could over the course of the season,” Bevacqua said. “You know, we lost our first two games, we’re not hiding from that. We lost against a really good Miami team, we lost the nail biter against Texas A&M, two great teams, by a total of four points and then we did everything we needed to do. We had one of most dominant 10 game runs in the history of college football. And on top of that we felt that the CFP committee, the ranking committee felt the same way.”

As far as those 10 wins, USC was the lone Power Four team that was ranked on Notre Dame’s schedule. Sure, they beat the Trojans, but lost to the aforementioned Texas A&M and Miami.

Notre Dame was left out in favor of Miami for the final at-large spot. Going into the weekend, Miami was No. 12 while Notre Dame was sitting pretty at No. 10. But due to BYU’s loss, the CFP committee felt it was an opportunity to drop the Cougars, pitting Bevacqua’s school against the Hurricanes. That’s when head to head came in.

“Dan Radakovich is a good friend. Miami deserves to be in the CFP. Of course they do, and Alabama does as well,” Bevacqua said. “And you could make that argument for Texas and Vanderbilt, and you could go right on down the list. But you know, we were just led to believe all season long, if we took care of business, we were going to be in and then to have that, that shock, that surprise on Sunday, in that room with those kids who have given everything that they have since August to put themselves in that position, to be told week in and week out that you’re in that position, provided you win, and we certainly won, when you think about these last 10 weeks. 

“And it just boggles my mind that when we got off that plane that Sunday morning in snowy South Bend after the Stanford game, that was it, and that’s not the way this season deserved to end with the performance of our football team. And I’m biased. Of course, I’m 1,000,000% biased when it comes to Notre Dame, but you ask anybody in college football, we’re one of the best teams in the country. We’re one of those handful of teams I can absolutely win the national championship this year, and then standing up here today knowing that we have 0% chance of proving that on the field it is a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s a situation we’re in.”