Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541906
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM JANUARY 2026 45 N otre Dame ran too many tun- nel screens in Week 1 at Miami. It will cost the team that shared the third-best odds to win the national championship entering the Dec. 7 an- nouncement a chance to do so. A blown coverage assignment and a deflected interception put Notre Dame behind the eight-ball early in Week 3 at Texas A&M. Tyler Buchner dropped a snap at one end of the field, and the SEC officials failed to see Donovan Hinish getting tackled at the other. As a result, the No. 3 team in ESPN's Football Power Index was not included in the College Football Playoff field. Jeremiyah Love has likely played his final snap in a blue-and-gold uniform. Jadarian Price and several others, too. The Irish will spend eight months with a pit in their stomachs because of what happened Dec. 7. And to be fair, that was always a possibility as soon as the final whistle sounded on Notre Dame's 0-2 start. After that happened, the Irish needed to win the rest of their games, win them convincingly and get help. They accom- plished everything that was in their con- trol. But they didn't get enough help. If Alabama defeated Oklahoma's ane- mic offense at home in Week 12, Notre Dame would be in. If Miami didn't lose two ACC games to unranked teams — instead earning a trip to the ACC championship game and probably winning it — Notre Dame would be in. If there was as much chaos in the SEC as there was last season, Notre Dame would be in. And based on CFP Selection Committee chair Hunter Yurachek's comments after revealing the final 12-team field, if BYU had played Texas Tech a little bit closer in the Big 12 championship, Notre Dame would be in. "We felt like the way BYU performed in their championship game, a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion, was worthy of Miami moving ahead of them in the rankings," Yurachek told ESPN's Rece Davis. "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 that, of course, is a complete joke. The committee felt the Irish were better than the Hurricanes all season. You could make a case for either team, particularly with Miami's head-to-head advantage, but the fact of the matter is the Canes have always been ranked at least two spots behind the Irish. Yura- chek said he instructed every member of the committee to go back and watch Notre Dame's loss to Miami last night — a game that had been more than avail- able to analyze for 98 days. Nothing about conference champi- onship weekend produced a data point that could change the way any com- mittee member felt about the Irish and Hurricanes. And yet, they changed their minds anyway. Being ranked next to each other should have nothing to do with who the committee thinks is bet- ter, even with the head-to-head result, which has existed this entire time. Speaking of changing their minds, the committee did the same last week when it moved Alabama ahead of Notre Dame after being extremely impressed with the Tide's 27-20 win over 5-7 Auburn. Many speculated Alabama's move ahead of the Irish was simply giving the committee room to drop the Tide for losing the SEC title game while keeping it in the CFP. Nope. BYU's four-touchdown loss knocked the Cougars down a spot, but Alabama's three-touchdown loss did nothing to the Tide. And with that in mind, the thought process that moved Kalen DeBoer's team over Marcus Free- man's last week — a week that included a 49-20 Notre Dame win over Stanford — is an abomination. "You're confused, in terms of what we could have done differently and why we fell when we won 49-20," Freeman said. "We were up 42-6 going into the fourth quarter. I don't spend time talking about other teams, but it's just like, 'What could we have done differently?' I don't know." Nothing. The answer is absolutely nothing. Notre Dame could have featured Love in Week 1 instead of dedicating its game plan to making CJ Carr more comfort- able. It could have attacked Miami wideout CJ Daniels at the catch point instead of waiting for the ball to arrive. It could have figured out its defense be- fore getting blitzed through the air by Texas A&M. It could have held firm on fourth-and-goal at the 11-yard line. But since that fateful night, there was nothing else the Irish could have done. They didn't get enough help, either from the rest of college football or an entirely nonsensical committee. And a team that was more than capable of winning it all will never get that chance. ✦ The Outcome Is What It Is, But The Process Was A Joke Staff writer Jack Soble has covered Notre Dame athletics for Blue & Gold Illustrated since August 2023. Contact him at Jack.Soble@on3.com. OFF THE DOME JACK SOBLE Notre Dame knew this was a possibility when it started 0-2, but Marcus Freeman and company have every right to be furious with the College Football Playoff selection committee. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER