Notre Dame AD calls College Football Playoff rankings an 'absolute joke' after Irish CFP snub

There was no way everyone was going to be happy with the final College Football Playoff rankings. In the wake of the conference championship games, it was clear that three teams, Notre Dame, Miami, and Alabama, were competing for two at-large spots. In the end, it was the Irish who got left out.

In the wake of that snub, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua ripped the selection committee, calling the rankings an “absolute joke.” Further, he’d add that the program is shocked to be left as the First Team Out.

“My feelings and the feelings here are just shock and, really, an absolute sense of sadness for our student-athletes,” Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports on Sunday. “Overwhelming shock and sadness. Like a collective feeling that we were all just punched in the stomach.”

Notre Dame had entered the weekend ranked ahead of Miami, despite losing to the Hurricanes in Week 1. At No. 10 and with the Hurricanes at No. 12, the Irish sat right on the cut line. That all changed over the weekend, as BYU lost, dropping them in the rankings. That led to a direct comparison between Notre Dame and Miami, which is when head-to-head finally became a factor. Meanwhile, Alabama lost over the weekend but didn’t slip from No. 9 at all.

For Notre Dame and Bevacqua, it was inexplicable. In fact, the College Football Playoff even feels stolen to them.

“There is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the outcome,” Bevacqua said. “As I said to Marcus [Freeman], one thing is for sure: Any rankings or show prior to this last one is an absolute joke and a waste of time. Why put these young student-athletes through these false emotions just to pull the rug out from underneath them having not played a game in two weeks and then a group of people in a room shatter their dreams without explanation? We feel like the Playoff was stolen from our student-athletes.”

Hunter Yurachek, the chair of the selection committee, spoke on ESPN shortly after the rankings came out as well. There, he did his best to explain the decision-making process.

“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’s Rece Davis would counter, wondering why this was the first time head-to-head seemed to matter in this discussion. However, again, Yurachek explained it wasn’t discussed until BYU fell from No. 11, making them directly next to one another in the rankings. That process would seemingly become the issue that Davis took issue with. Given that Bevacqua feels the Playoff was stolen from Notre Dame, it appears that frustration isn’t unique to him.

Bevacqua would go on to explain to ESPN that there is frustration with the process. On top of that, they’ve not yet considered what their bowl future is going to look like.