What they’re saying about Notre Dame being left out of College Football Playoff and Irish declining bowl bid
In a day that this writer will never forget, Notre Dame was bumped out of the 2025-26 College Football Playoff and then declined to participate in a postseason bowl.
In this article, we’ll take a look around at what the media is saying about the news, including Blue & Gold’s Mike Singer, Eric Hansen, Tyler Horka and Jack Soble giving their instant reaction in a YouTube live show. You can watch the replay of the show in the video player above.
They went live after the College Football Playoff rankings but before the news about the bowl decline was official.
Tyler Horka, Blue & Gold: CFP committee got it wrong putting Alabama, Miami in playoff over Notre Dame
The College Football Playoff committee knew the result all along and it didn’t matter. Notre Dame was eight spots better than Miami in the CFP rankings. Then six. Four. Three. Two.
Who cares what the number was. As long as it was a smaller (better) one than Miami’s. And it was.
Until it wasn’t.
Sunday, the committee did the unthinkable and unreasonable and moved Miami ahead of Notre Dame in the CFP rankings, giving the Hurricanes the last at-large spot in the 12-team field and leaving Notre Dame high and dry when it had the Fighting Irish safely in the bracket in all five rankings releases prior to the final one. Talk about a tease. Worse than a tease. A total slap in the face.
The reasoning should anger Notre Dame fans just as much as the act itself.
The committee spent time in the last week watching a game that was played nearly 100 days ago. Miami 27, Notre Dame 24. Played one day before that? Florida State 31, Alabama 17. Played one day ago? Georgia 28, Alabama 7.
Alabama still got into the playoff field as the No. 9 seed, one spot in front of No. 10 Miami.
Eric Hansen, Blue & Gold: Why Notre Dame walked away from a bowl after the CFP snub, and what needs to come next
What played like an eloquent, 49-word equivalent of a middle finger to the College Football Playoff selection committee and the bowl system that the Notre Dame football program issued Sunday afternoon, at the time felt decidedly off-brand.
In Irish coach Marcus Freeman’s world, you don’t roll out “choose hard” as a mantra for Notre Dame football and a lifestyle to match it, and then bail on it when life gets too hard.
Which means you make the most out of the bowl opportunity, however irrelevant it is to college football’s big picture. And you do it, because it could have been relevant to Notre Dame’s big picture.
Not the outcome necessarily, but how you go about developing your team for 2026, how you frame Sunday’s College Football snub on the recruiting trail, how you spend extra time pursuing and landing the right transfer portal prospects.
And how you transcend adversity, no matter whether Notre Dame’s exclusion from the field reeks more of corruption, collusion, incompetence or some combination thereof.
Which makes AP No. 9/CFP No. 11 Notre Dame’s Sunday decision to, via social media, opt out of the bowl picture, likely a Pop-Tarts Bowl matchup with No. 12/12 BYU (11-2), feel like adding a self-inflicted wound to the oozing, pus-filled gem CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek delivered a few hours earlier.
Tyler James, Blue & Gold: Weekly College Football Playoff rankings prove to be irrelevant with Notre Dame’s snub
The College Football Playoff committee spent five weeks explaining how much it liked what the Notre Dame football team became in the 2025 season. But when it came time for the committee to set the playoff field, it told the Irish (10-2) they weren’t good enough.
In doing so, the committee illustrated why its weekly ranking releases pretend to provide transparency while meaning next to nothing. Notre Dame athletics director Pete Bevacqua came to that same conclusion Sunday after No. 9 Alabama (10-3) and No. 10 Miami (10-2) received the final two at-large spots in the College Football Playoff field ahead of No. 11 Notre Dame. He described the weekly ranking shows as a “farce” in an interview with Ross Dellenger for Yahoo Sports.
“If the rankings shows are legitimate, there is no logical explanation of what happened to us,” Bevacqua said. “Have one ranking show at the end, like Sunday. What’s the point of doing anything prior to that?”
When the College Football Playoff released its first top 25 on Nov. 4, the Irish were ranked No. 10 with a 6-2 record and ahead of every other two-loss team in the country. College Football Playoff committee chair Mack Rhoades, who later that month left his committee role and eventually stepped down as Baylor’s athletics director, praised Notre Dame’s improvement through eight games.
Barkley Truax, On3: Joey Galloway criticizes CFP committee for flipping Miami, Notre Dame in final rankings
Miami is in, and Notre Dame‘s out. The Hurricanes are heading to the College Football Playoff as the No. 10 seed after jumping Notre Dame in the Sunday’s bracket reveal.
The Fighting Irish had been ahead of Miami since the CFP rankings began this season. This was despite the Hurricanes holding a head-to-head win over Notre Dame this season. ESPN’s Joey Galloway, who was present on the panel on, questioned the committee’s decision to flip the two teams despite both being idle during conference championship week.
“This is very strange to me. And again, Rece, you mentioned earlier that they hadn’t compared these two teams. Well, why not? They should have absolutely compared these two teams,” Galloway said. “We had a ranking come out on Tuesday. If they were going to flip these two teams that did not play, they should have done it on Tuesday.
“Now, this Miami team, the way they’re playing the last few games, they are a very good football team. They have have a chance to win, just like any other team. But it is strange to me that you have two teams that were sitting on the couch yesterday that somehow flipped in their rankings.”
The debate over where to rank Notre Dame and Miami was the biggest question heading into the playoffs. Despite Miami’s 27-24 win over the Irish during the season opener on Aug. 31, Notre Dame was ranked two spots ahead of the Hurricanes during last week’s rankings reveal.
Until Sunday, the committee appeared to be looking at the full body of work for both teams to justify their rankings. While Notre Dame lost its first two games of the season against Miami, and then to Texas A&M, the Irish went on to win its last 10 games of the season. That included wins over ranked USC and Pitt teams.
For Miami, the Mario Cristobal’s squad began the season 5-0 before finishing the back-half of their schedule 5-2. Those pair of losses could be damning for Miami, as they lost to an unranked Louisville team at home and in overtime vs. SMU on the road over a three-week span. They’ve also won four-straight games, all of which have been won by multiple scores. Both teams finished the regular season 10-2.
Top 10
- 1Breaking
Bowl game opt out
ND announces
- 2Trending
Soble sounds off
Missing CFP is a joke
- 3
Why ND didn't get in
CFP chair explains
- 4
Notre Dame snubbed
Miami jumps Irish
- 5
Love's Heisman campaign
Inside ND's push
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Now, the Hurricanes will move forward with their College Football Playoff matchup. They’ll travel to College Station to play 7-seed Texas A&M on the road. The winner plays Ohio State in the quarterfinals.
Nick Kosko, On3: Kirk Herbstreit calls out ‘misleading’ decision CFP committee made with Miami, Notre Dame
ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit called out the College Football Playoff committee for their decision regarding Miami and Notre Dame. Herbstreit acknowledged Miami’s head to head was the right metric when it came down to the Hurricanes and Irish for the final spot in the rankings.
However, it was misleading coming in since Notre Dame was ranked above Miami most of the year despite a head to head loss. Not only that, the committee opted to put a 10-3 Alabama team at No 9 Sunday, over Miami, giving them a safe spot.
“So it’s not like the AP poll, where every single week we follow and react to what happened. This is, to me, a mistake and misleading, because of having these Tuesday night shows and having Miami so far away from Notre Dame,” Herbstreit said on the CFP reveal show. “It’s easy to say, ‘well they should have had Miami ahead of Notre Dame all along.’ Well, Miami had some two tough losses and games they controlled against SMU and Louisville, and gave them both away. There had to be some kind of reaction from the committee and a punishment from the committee.
“But Miami did what they needed to do. They kept climbing the ladder, getting close enough they did their job on the field, and eventually, even though they didn’t play, Notre Dame didn’t play, the committee felt that with BYU’s second loss to Texas Tech, in convincing fashion, they should go beneath Miami. And again, that’s where the head to head mattered, and that’s why they ended up flipping Miami and Notre Dame.”
Herbstreit believed the College Football Playoff committee had a debate between an SEC runner-up in Alabama and a 10-2 Miami team and they said they were playoff teams. However, Alabama was ranked higher.
Because of that, Miami and Notre Dame were pitted against one another for the final spot. With a Hurricanes win over the Irish in August, the CFP had an easier decision to make.
“I think, again, it became a debate between Miami and Alabama,” Herbstreit said. “I think they got the nod. Miami-Notre Dame. I think the head to head that Joey’s talking about, one of the things I think is interesting based on what we’ve always been trained is, and I know the Tuesday night show creates some drama, and it creates a lot of heartache and headache for a lot of people to understand, but they really don’t feel that their rankings are true until they get all of the data in. And with BYU losing a second time convincingly, even though Miami didn’t play, Notre Dame didn’t play, that put BYU behind Miami.
“And now head to head matters, because they’re right next to each other. And even though they weren’t on the field last week, it’s hard to justify ‘how can a team go by when neither team played?’ They would tell you in that room that we needed all the games played, all the games finished, and now we can see that Miami and Notre Dame were next to each other, and last week has nothing to do, in their minds, with this week and their final rankings.”
Dan Wolken, Yahoo! Sports: College Football Playoff committee sending message to Notre Dame by leaving Irish out of 12-team field
The work is finally done for the worst selection committee in the College Football Playoff’s dozen-year history, and there are only two ways to explain the grotesque, odious bracket that it belched out Sunday.
By jumping Miami over Notre Dame for the last playoff spot when neither team played on conference championship weekend, either the committee didn’t know what it was doing all along or it looked at its bad options Saturday night and chose the one with the most potential upside to the members.
Make no mistake, excluding Notre Dame was a message from the CFP, launched in the direction of South Bend, Indiana, and tinged with politics that have festered within the ranks of administrators across the country:
Don’t want to join a conference? Fine, but if it’s a close call for a playoff spot, you get what you get.
And this year, the Irish get nothing. Too bad.
Nicole Auerbach, NBC Sports: The College Football Playoff committee ‘really screwed up’ this time
This year, the College Football Playoff selection committee really screwed up.
And that’s saying something. This is a selection process that has always been wildly inconsistent and confusing. But, for more than a decade now, those of us who know and love college football have had to take it seriously. We tune into the weekly TV show to see the committee’s Top 25, even though the chairman will say things that don’t make sense. Sometimes, a so-called “bad loss” will matter one week but not the next. Or a blowout might drop one team but not another that suffered a nearly identical result.
But we go along with the system and the process because we love the sport. And the new 12-team bracket has meant dozens of teams are in the mix late in the season, with so many more meaningful games played each November. We accept that this is a selection committee comprised of human beings who are, obviously, subjective. We understand that there will be bubble teams with flaws, and that it’s going to be difficult to compare them to one another.
We go through this whole exercise because it’s better than having computers spit out two teams to play each other in the Bowl Championship Series. And the 12-teamer includes and engages so many more teams than the four-team field did.