Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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44 JANUARY 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED T he College Football Playoff commit‑ tee 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 Col‑ lege Football Playoff field ahead of No. 11 Notre Dame. He described the weekly ranking shows as a "farce" in an interview with Ross Dellenger of 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 Sun‑ day. What's the point of doing anything prior to that?" When the College Football Playoff re‑ leased 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. "When we look at the tape," Rhoades said on Nov. 4, "we think Notre Dame is a really solid football team — both sides of the ball." One week later, Rhoades discussed Notre Dame's strengths in comparison to Vanderbilt. "The committee really like Notre Dame as a complete team, again, defen‑ sively. Their run game is as good as any‑ body, if not the best in the country when you think about their two backs, [Jer‑ emiyah] Love and [Jadarian] Price. Then [CJ] Carr at the quarterback spot, he's the third‑ranked quarterback in terms of passing efficiency in the country." Notre Dame won four games by a combined 153 points (205‑52) after being ranked No. 10 in the country on Nov. 4. It ended up dropping one spot to No. 11 in the final ranking after the confer‑ ence championship weekend. Two of the teams ahead of Notre Dame on Nov. 4 lost twice — then‑No. 4 Alabama and then‑No. 7 BYU. BYU lost to now No. 4 Texas Tech on Nov. 8 (29‑7) and again in the Big 12 Championship (34‑7). The Cougars landed at No. 12 in the final top 25 from the CFP committee. No. 9 Alabama remained in the playoff field despite losses to now No. 8 Oklahoma on Nov. 15 (23‑21) and now No. 3 Georgia in the SEC Championship (28‑7). Meanwhile, Miami climbed from No. 18 on Nov. 4 to No. 10 on the Sunday of the CFP announcement. The Hur‑ ricanes won their last four games by a total margin of 110 (151‑41) points. It's clear Miami finished its season strong, but it makes little sense why the College Football Playoff committee waited until the final weekend to jump Miami over Notre Dame. Neither team played during the conference championship weekend. And the only opponent of either team to play that weekend was Boise State, which won the Mountain West Champi‑ onship with a 38‑21 victory over UNLV and lost at Notre Dame, 28‑7, on Oct. 4 CFP committee chair Hunter Yura‑ chek, who replaced Rhoades on Nov. 13, explained that the absence of a team be‑ tween Notre Dame and Miami magnified the head‑to‑head outcome Aug. 31. He even asked the committee members to rewatch the game over the weekend. "There was observation from the coaches in the room where Notre Dame did a lot of chasing of some of the athletic receivers on the Miami side, and it just felt like there was a little bit more ath‑ leticism on the side of Miami versus Notre Dame," Yurachek said of the committee's latest takeaways of the Notre Dane‑Miami game. "Then the fact that Miami's defense really stifled Notre Dame's running game like nobody else did the entire season." But if the committee was doing the job it was tasked with doing, it shouldn't have needed to rewatch the Notre Dame‑ Miami game so late in the process. It should already be well versed in every‑ thing that happened in that game. And if the committee had extra time to re‑ watch games, did it consider rewatching Alabama's 31‑17 loss to a Florida State team that finished the season 5‑7? If the first games of the season aren't already baked into the rankings before the final ranking, there's no reason to even create the rankings until the very end. Maybe the committee was too busy re‑ watching the Notre Dame‑Miami game to realize how unimpressive Alabama looked down the stretch. The Crimson Tide leaped over Notre Dame the pre‑ vious weekend following a 27‑20 win against an Auburn team that finished 5‑7 and then didn't drop at all after rushing for‑3 yards in its loss to Georgia. The College Football Playoff com‑ mittee opened itself up for all kinds of conspiratorial accusations with how the process played out. "There is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the out‑ come," Bevacqua said. "As I said to Mar‑ cus [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 hav‑ ing 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." ✦ Notre Dame director of athletics Pete Bevacqua (right) said of Notre Dame's CFP snub, "We feel like the playoff was stolen from our student-athletes." PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Weekly CFP Rankings Prove To Be Irrelevant Tyler James has been covering Notre Dame athletics since 2011. He can be reached on X @ TJamesND FIRST AND LAST TYLER JAMES