Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541906
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM JANUARY 2026 21 decision, in the pre-CFP era, to keep a 6-6 team home. That one had lost its last four games by a total of 17 points, and the program used the time to chase ousted head coach Charlie Weis' succes- sor instead of a seventh win. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN AND STILL COULD BE The irony is that had this Notre Dame team been selected for the College Football Playoff — as the AP, coaches and FWAA-NFF polls all had the Irish at No. 9 and in the field — perhaps the best version of the Irish would have shown up. Likely to come back from injuries were starting offensive guard Billy Schrauth, the best Irish offensive line- man to suit up this season; starting slot receiver Jaden Greathouse; start- ing defensive tackle Gabe Rubio; start- ing safety Tae Johnson; starting kicker Noah Burnette; key rotational tight end Cooper Flanagan, and maybe even Charles Jagusah, the highest-ceiling O-lineman on the roster. Freeman, per the source, hasn't yet formulated the next steps for the Irish players, but at least the school doesn't have to pay a $500,000 fine for opting out, as the two Big 12 schools are being levied by their conference. The perks of independence? But what is clear is the next step di- rector of athletics Pete Bevacqua must take. Fight back. In other words, chan- nel the disillusionment of a broken sys- tem by helping to put a better one in place. To be fair, Bevacqua had already pre- emptively worked toward that end as the CFP bickers and barters about what the next evolution should look like, even extending its self-imposed deadline by a month for a chance on meaning- ful tweaks in formatting and selection process. But what happened Dec. 7 brings heightened urgency. Would a 16-team field really make a difference? Wouldn't teams 17 and 18 bellyache just as loud and justifiably as whoever's on the cutline in the 12-team format? Probably the biggest difference is the teams on the bubble in the larger playoff wouldn't have the potential to win a national title. The eye test says the Irish, on the wrong side of the cutline, would have had a fighting chance at it in the 2025 postseason. Now the fight on the field won't re- sume until the Irish show up at iconic Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis., on Sept. 6, 2026, against the Wisconsin Badgers in a makeup Shamrock Series matchup deferred from the pandemic- rearranging 2020 season. The fight off the field starts now. "There is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the out- come," Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger. "As I said to Marcus, 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-ath- letes 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 ex- planation? We feel like the playoff was stolen from our student-athletes." That doesn't mean knee-jerking into joining a conference or leaving the par- tial membership in the ACC that the Irish are already a part of out of spite. Choose hard. Choose bold. Then take it out on the field in 2026 on whoever opts in to getting in the way of your mission. ✦ The Irish player leadership felt that with all the impending individual opt-outs — for NFL Draft and injury recovery reasons — the 2025 team that essentially played 10 straight elimination games over the final 11 weeks of the season "would not accurately be represented" in a bowl game, hence the opt-out. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER