Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541906
18 JANUARY 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY TYLER JAMES N otre Dame football's 27-24 loss at Miami Aug. 31 didn't pre- vent the Irish from being listed ahead of Miami in the College Football Playoff rankings until the only one that mattered. When the CFP committee revealed its final rankings that determined this year's College Football Playoff field, Notre Dame dropped from No. 10 Dec. 2 to No. 11 Dec. 7. Meanwhile, Miami jumped from No. 12 to No. 10 over that same time frame. That gave Miami a spot in the playoff field and left Notre Dame out of the tournament. Neither Notre Dame nor Miami played a game during the time between the release of the two rankings. But BYU, which was ranked No. 11 Dec. 2 between Notre Dame and Miami, lost 34-7 to Texas Tech for the second time this season. That pushed BYU down to No. 12 and out of Miami's path to leap the Irish in the eyes of the committee. "The first move in that was we felt like the way BYU performed in their champi- onship game, a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion, was worthy of Miami moving ahead of them in the rankings," CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said on ESPN. "And once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for with Notre Dame and Miami. And you look at those two teams on paper, and they are almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against their common opponents, but the one metric 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 inter- esting debate from our coaches on what that game looked like as we watched it. With that in mind, we gave Miami the nod over Notre Dame into that 10 spot." ESPN's Rece Davis pressed Yurachek, the athletics director of Arkansas, for more information on why head-to- head didn't come up in previous rank- ings discussions about Notre Dame and Miami when they were close enough to be compared to each other. It's hard to make sense of Yurachek's first answer. "If you recall, Miami was a loser of two of three when they entered the poll at 18, and they were in close proximity to Lou- isville at the time, who I believe was be- low them in 21st or 22nd spot," Yurachek EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINABLE CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek expounds on why Notre Dame was dropped from the playoff field Yurachek, the CFP selection committee chair, acknowledged the inherent controversy in the process and maintained that the committee made the best deci- sions possible under the current system — even if not everyone agreed with the final bracket. PHOTO COURTESY ARKANSAS