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Notre Dame declines bowl invitation after missing College Football Playoff

ns_headshot_2024-clearby: Nick Schultz18 hours agoNickSchultz_7

Notre Dame is declining a bowl invitation, the program announced. The Fighting Irish missed out on the College Football Playoff this year as the first team out of the 12-team bracket.

Notre Dame lost its first two games of the season, falling to Miami in Week 1 and Texas A&M in Week 3 by a combined four points. From there, the Fighting Irish rattled off 10 straight wins, but headed into conference championship weekend squarely on the CFP bubble.

Now, the Irish’s season is over. On3’s Brett McMurphy reported they were due to play in the Pop-Tarts Bowl against BYU.

“As a team, we’ve decided to withdraw our name from consideration for a bowl game following the 2025 season,” the program said in a statement. “We appreciate all the support from our families and fans, and we’re hoping to bring the 12th national title to South Bend in 2026.”

Sunday afternoon, the committee announced Notre Dame missed out on the field. Alabama moved up to No. 9 and Miami became the No. 10 seed as the result of the head-to-head matchup with the Fighting Irish. Because Tulane and James Madison were the last two highest-ranked conference champions, Notre Dame was the first team out as the No. 11-ranked team.

Notre Dame is the latest team to opt out of a bowl game this season. Iowa State and Kansas State announced they would not play in bowl games after both programs underwent coaching changes. They each received fines from the Big 12, as well.

More on Notre Dame’s CFP absence

Following the season-opening losses to Miami and Texas A&M, Notre Dame won 10 consecutive games, all of which came by double-digit margins of victory. As for the decision to move the Hurricanes ahead of the Fighting Irish, College Football Playoff selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek told ESPN’s Rece Davis it came down to the fact BYU dropped behind Miami after the Big 12 Championship. That put the Hurricanes and Notre Dame next to each other.

From there, the head-to-head matchup from Week 1 became the deciding factor. As a result, Miami is the No. 10 seed and Notre Dame is the first team out.

“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,” Yurachek said. “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. 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 10th spot.”