CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek reveals why Miami made field, Notre Dame was left out

The great national debate ahead of Selection Sunday leading into the reveal of 2025’s 12-team College Football Playoff field centered around how the CFP selection committee would evaluate a Week 1 head-to-head game between Miami and Notre Dame, which the Hurricanes won 27-24. Turns out it was ultimately the final data point utilized to determine the Playoff’s last at-large bid.

CFP selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek explained how the 12-member selection committee came to the conclusion that Miami deserved to be the No. 10 team in this season’s final Playoff field during an after-reveal appearance on ESPN’s College Football Playoff Selection Show on Sunday. Ultimately it required the committee dropping previous No. 11 BYU down after a second lopsided loss (34-7) to No. 4 Texas Tech in Saturday’s Big 12 Championship Game, which allowed the committee to evaluate the resumes of Miami and Notre Dame side-by-side, with the Hurricanes’ Week 1 win becoming the final factor in their elevation to the No. 10 seed.

“The first move in that (decision-making process) was we felt like the way BYU performed in their (Big 12) championship game with a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion was worthy of Miami moving of them in the rankings. And once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody has been hungering for with Notre Dame and Miami,” Yurachek said on ESPN. “And when you looked at those teams on paper, they’re almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponent, the results against their common opponent. But the one metric that we had to fall back on again was the head to head. I charged the committee members to go back and watch that game again, the Miami-Notre Dame game because it was so far back, and we got some interesting debate from our coaches on what that game looked like as they watched it. With that in mind, we gave Miami the nod over Notre Dame in that 10^th spot.”

ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis countered by asking why this was the first time Miami and Notre Dame were ultimately compared to one another despite both being relatively close in the rankings over the last several weeks, to which Yurachek made it clear BYU was the final hurdle.

“If you recall, Miami was the loser of two of three when they entered the poll at 18, and they were in close proximity to Louisville at the time, who I believe was below them at the 21^st or 22^nd spot, and we didn’t use the head-to-head metric to compare Miami and Louisville, a team that had beaten Miami,” Yurachek continued. “But not until they got in close proximity and side-by-side with the move of BYU that we were able to evaluate just those two teams side-by-side. We always had someone between them, whether it was previously Alabama and BYU, and just BYU in the last week.

“After the championship game in the Big 12 and the way BYU performed again against Texas Tech, we felt Miami deserved to be ranked ahead of BYU,” Yurachek concluded. “And then you had the direct head-to-head comparison between those two teams, Miami and Notre Dame, sitting respectively at 10 and 11 in our (final Top 25) poll.”