Did you do it? College football playoffs Did the committee just install a trapdoor that would cause Notre Dame to fall straight off the field?
After weeks of propping up Notre Dame's weak resume to make it seem like the Irish were a lock for the 12-team field as they finished 10-2, there was some legitimate drama surrounding the playoffs' most divisive opponent heading into the final weekend.
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It came as something of a surprise on Tuesday night's second-to-last ratings show on ESPN. the committee moved Alabama to 9th place and dropped Notre Dame to 10th place.. This is very important because since the ACC and American Conference champions will almost certainly finish outside the top 12, the final spot overall will go to the 10th-place team.
Why is this potentially bad news for Notre Dame?
It all comes down to the Big 12 Championship game between Texas Tech and BYU first and foremost.
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The Red Raiders are ranked fourth and appear to be in playoff contention no matter what happens. BYU is ranked No. 11 and will earn an automatic bid if it wins, giving the Big 12 its second playoff team and knocking Notre Dame out of the playoff position.
But here's where it gets really interesting.
Let's say Texas Tech wins as expected (the Red Raiders won the first meeting 29-7). That would presumably knock the Cougars down the rankings among other teams with two losses. And if the order of the two-loss teams is the same as it was this week, that means the last two teams ranked for last place will be either Notre Dame or…Miami.
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So far, the selection committee has resisted direct comparisons between Notre Dame and Miami, with the Irish finishing several spots ahead. But if this becomes the inevitable choice for the final playoff spot, will they have to default to Miami's 27-24 win over Notre Dame in Week 1 as the tiebreaker to push the Hurricanes into the final overall spot?
“In-person meetings are one of the metrics the committee will use,” search committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said Tuesday. “Obviously it's easier to use when the teams are positioned behind each other. [in the rankings] as opposed to when they are separated by a team, two or three, as was the case.”
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Uh oh, Irish.
At least the committee understands the theatrical aspect of what he just did. Either way, Notre Dame vs. Miami for last place will be the most explosive dispute in the 12-year history of the CFP.
Or perhaps the committee finally realized, as it should have all along, that Notre Dame got too much credit for going 10-2 against the schedule without much weight.
No offense to the Irish. This is a great football team with exciting playmakers on both sides of the ball that has won 10 games in a row by an average margin of 29.7 points.
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The question is who those 10 games were against, including 2-10 Purdue, 2-10 Arkansas, 2-10 Boston College, 3-9 Syracuse, 4-8 Stanford and 7-5 NC State. Notre Dame's only wins over quality competition were over No. 16 Southern California, Navy 9–2, Pittsburgh 8–4 and Boise State 8–4.
This… isn't great.
At 10-2 and without many wins, is Notre Dame in danger of missing the College Football Playoff? (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vazquez)
(Associated Press)
Notre Dame may pass the eye test, but based on the resume, the Irish are probably a few spots above where they should be.
Irish fans and head coach Marcus Freeman argue they shouldn't have to pay a hefty fine for a road loss to Miami and a 41-40 home loss in Week 2 against Texas A&M, a game that came down to an Aggies fourth-down pass in the final seconds. And they're right: two September losses to good teams by four points shouldn't disqualify them from the 12-team playoffs.
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But this year the schedule didn't work out in Notre Dame's favor. We didn't have enough opportunities to win signature victories until the end of the season. And this year, the committee may have to choose between the team it thought was the best all season and the one that, like it or not, won the head-to-head matchup.
A cynic might even argue that the committee flipped the Notre Dame and Alabama rankings this week to create just such a scenario. With Alabama playing Georgia in the SEC championship game, the Crimson Tide now have a buffer to stay on the field even if they lose.
If BYU wins the Big 12, their job will be pretty easy. If Texas Tech wins, it will likely come down to the two teams that played in Week 1, starting a big national debate about which school is more deserving of the final spot.
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And the committee's history suggests it will head to Miami.
Throughout its existence, the CFP Committee has generally adhered to the established script. In the end, he does not make bold assumptions and relies on what he has seen with his own eyes.
This explains, for example, why, although the committee has the right to punish Ole Miss for Lane Kiffin's departure According to his records, he does not do this. Ole Miss essentially moved up to sixth place this week.
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“We can't estimate what the impact is because we don't have a game where we can compare Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin and without him,” Yurachek said. “Without that data, it didn't really become part of our thought process.”
Think about this principle through the lens of the Miami-Notre Dame debate.
The committee would have every right to say that their Week 1 game has little bearing on where the two teams are now and that they simply believe the Irish are the better team.
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But history says they are not going to do this. Instead, they're going to look at Notre Dame's best win over No. 16 USC and compare it to Miami's best win.
What's up against… No. 10 Notre Dame.
In other words, the Irish should be very nervous. This doesn't mean they don't exist. This does not mean that they are included. But any confidence they might have felt after finishing ahead of Miami by a few spots a few weeks ago has evaporated.
Now all eyes will be on the Big 12, where one result will likely knock Notre Dame off the field and another result will force the Irish to make a head-to-head comparison with the team they lost to on the field.
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Frankly, this is a discussion the committee should have had all along given the magnitude of this outcome for both Notre Dame and Miami. Now it has come.
And we're in for some exciting drama on Sunday.
