Miami is getting hit with the biggest College Football Playoff committee injustice ever

Hanging in the office in my house is a column I wrote that ran on the front page of the New York Times’ sports section. The headline: Unbeaten and Unchosen.

That article, published on Dec. 3, 2023, covered the College Football Playoff Committee’s decision to select Alabama over unbeaten Florida State. The CFP Committee faced an impossible decision — take the unbeaten team that lost quarterback Jordan Travis to a season-ending injury or the one-loss Alabama team that went unbeaten in SEC play and won the conference. It chose the Crimson Tide, creating an open wound that still hasn’t healed in Tallahassee.

How could a Power 5 conference champion who hadn’t lost a game be left out? How could a team that didn’t lose a game in SEC play be left out? There were four spots and five worthy teams. The CFP Committee had to make a decision, and both were wrong. It was an unwinnable situation, and someone, no matter the direction, would be left feeling betrayed.

What is happening right now with Miami is the biggest injustice in College Football Playoff history. Why? Because the CFP Committee has a choice to make. There is a correct answer and an incorrect answer. This Committee, comprised of a new group adhering to new standards than the group in 2023, has consciously made the wrong choice. Repeatedly.

Tuesday evening, it became clear that it isn’t going to change.

If you’ve been following along, you’re keenly aware of the situation I’m talking about. No. 12 Miami is 9-2 and beat No. 9 Notre Dame, who is also 9-2. Its best win is against No. 17 USC. The two teams played each other and have similar resumes, yet the Hurricanes (who own the head-to-head and possess a top-10 win) are inexplicably ranked three spots behind. The cut-off line for who makes the final field is right in the middle of that discrepancy.

As results kept pouring in week over week, I thought the CFP Committee would eventually land on the correct answer. It didn’t matter if the rankings were off in the middle of the season. All that matters to me is getting it right at the end. Once the Hurricanes arrived in the same evaluation pod as Notre Dame, the Committee would have no choice but to rely on the head-to-head matchup when issuing the final rankings, right?

Wrong, apparently.

Tuesday night, there was still a three-team gap in the rankings even after Miami jumped Utah in the poll. But Committee chair Hunter Yurachek — the athletic director at Arkansas — made a comment that makes it clear nothing will change, even if Miami and Notre Dame both win Saturday. Apparently, both teams have already been compared to one another.

“There’s groupings of teams that are compared throughout the rankings,” Yurachek said. “Notre Dame and Miami, of course, you’ve got the head-to-head, but that’s only one data point. The committee has felt as you watched Notre Dame on film, watched their games throughout the year, they’ve been consistent, even in the early-season games that they lost by three in Miami and by one point to Texas A&M.

“Miami is a team that really appears — looks like the Miami team that started 5-0 and what they have been able to do over the last three weeks in winning those three games and looking really good on the offensive side of the ball. So we compare a number of things when we’re looking at teams that are closely ranked together. And so you’ve got some teams that between Miami and Notre Dame, such as an Alabama, such as a BYU, that we’re also comparing to Miami.”

Yep. Again, they’ve been compared already. Really.

Sure, Miami still has a game against Pittsburgh this weekend it has to win. And the Panthers — a team Notre Dame has already demolished — sit at No. 22 in the poll. There’s yet another chance for the Hurricanes to make a statement that could sway the Committee’s thought process. It won’t.

Assuming Miami wins and both the Hurricanes and Notre Dame win out? Miami’s resume will be a 10-2 record with a top-10 win and Notre Dame’s resume will be a 10-2 record with (likely) a top-20 win over USC. Pittsburgh will likely drop out of the final poll if Miami wins Saturday, but it doesn’t matter because the Hurricanes and Notre Dame will both hypothetically have beaten the Panthers.

Yes, the CFP Committee uses projective metrics that favor Notre Dame. A bunch of data and numbers that tell us that Notre Dame is better, including a strength of schedule that is entirely propped up by teams to which the Irish lost. Those metrics can be super helpful when choosing between two teams with similar records who haven’t played.

But what the CFP Committee is doing here is valuing what data tells us more than the results of the games. Which begs the question: Why did Miami even play Notre Dame if the result is going to be disregarded when it matters most?

Listen, I understand the Notre Dame side of things. They have looked far more consistent down the stretch of the season and were competitive in both losses against top-15 teams, including Miami. If the Irish played Miami this weekend, most people would choose Notre Dame to win. There are 11 other games to consider, not just the Miami game from the season-opener.

But, again, there is a real way to tell us who would win if those two teams played. The game happened in real life on national television for the entire country to witness. We all saw what happened.

This isn’t a case of teams with different records and different circumstances, either. This isn’t a plea for Florida State to be ranked ahead of Alabama because the Seminoles beat the Crimson Tide at the beginning of the year.

In this instance, Notre Dame doesn’t have top-level wins that neutralize the head-to-head result. Of course Notre Dame has looked better down the stretch — they have beaten 2-9 Purdue, 2-9 Arkansas, 1-10 Boston College, and, most recently, 3-8 Syracuse, who fielded a team with a lacrosse player playing quarterback. Notre Dame is a legit CFP team that could make a run, but let’s not pretend it’s easier to look better when the schedule considerably lightens up suffering losses to the two really good teams you faced at the beginning of the year.

Who does the public think is better? Notre Dame. Who do I think is better? Notre Dame. But who cares what I think. I’m 30 games below .500 picking games against the spread on our podcast this year. Who cares what you think? The public is often wrong, which is why they have those big, beautiful buildings in the desert in Southwestern Nevada.

Data, feelings, projections and what could happen are valuable. They really are. They are good tools for helping the CFP Committee see the forest from the trees, especially when two similar teams haven’t played each other. This Committee is still lost and doing something no other group has done before it — prioritizing data and metrics over results.

The CFP Committee has disregarded the games we watched this year and is favoring a team because they think that team has looked better. If we aren’t going to adhere to the results of the games, then that defeats the purpose of even playing them. Why not just simulate the entire season and let the data tell us who the national champion is at the end of the year?

If it weren’t for Notre Dame’s scheduling agreement with the ACC, I’d cancel next year’s game if I were Miami. Unfortunately, the Hurricanes still have to play it next year. When they do, it’s important to remember the result isn’t going to matter.

The CFP Committee is just going to decide who they think is better at the end of the year, completely veering off from the guardrails — the games — to which previous iterations of the Committee stayed loyal. This is the Wild Wild West. We’re all driving on the street and there are no lines on the roads. It’s a free-for-all.

That’s not what makes this sport great.

The games do.

They should always matter. Always. That they don’t this year the biggest injustice this sport has seen in the modern era.