Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua blasts CFP committee: 'Feel like the playoff was stolen'
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The College Football Playoff bracket has been set, and Notre Dame football was not included in it.
The Fighting Irish learned on Sunday, Dec. 7, that the CFP selection committee dropped them from the bracket after they entered conference championship weekend ranked 10th in the penultimate top 25. They finished ranked 11th in the CFP top 25 and were the first team out of the bracket after being replaced by American and Sun Belt champions Tulane and James Madison, respectively.
It’s a decision that Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger brought shock to everyone in South Bend.
“There is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the outcome,” Bevacqua told Dellenger. “As I said to Marcus (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 having 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.”
The decision by the selection committee is arguably the biggest controversy from Sunday’s CFP bracket release, as the committee finally used the head-to-head tiebreaker between Notre Dame and Miami after the Fighting Irish ranked ahead of Miami in each of the previous five rankings releases.
Notre Dame was ranked at No. 11 in the final CFP top 25 rankings on Sunday, while Miami, as a result of BYU’s loss to Texas Tech in the Big 12 championship game, jumped two spots in the rankings to No. 10 to be the final team added to the bracket. Neither Notre Dame nor Miami played in Week 15, as the Fighting Irish compete as an independent and the Hurricanes were ineligible for the ACC Championship game.
Notre Dame and Miami had not been near each other in the previous rankings released by the CFP committee until the Dec. 2 release, when the Fighting Irish were at No. 10 and the Hurricanes were at No. 12. Even then, the committee did not give the head-to-head nod to Miami.
Entering Selection Sunday, Notre Dame held a higher strength of record and a strength of schedule compared to Miami, according to ESPN’s College Football Power Index. However, those two metric points did not matter, as the committee used its head-to-head tiebreaker on Notre Dame and Miami after not using it before.
“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,” CFP chair Hunter Yurachek said on ESPN following the bracket release on why Miami topped Notre Dame . “And once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everyone had been hungry for with Notre Dame and Miami.
“You look at those two teams on paper, and they’re almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, their results against their common opponents. But their one metric we had to fall back on again was the head-to-head.”
Bevacqua also shared his thoughts on scrapping the weekly CFP top 25 rankings reveal show, as reported by ESPN’s Jen Lada following her interview with Bevacqua.
“They are simply frustrated by the process and why all of a sudden is Notre Dame on the outside looking in when they had been led to believe they would be in? In his opinion, any rankings ahead of the final rankings are a quote, ‘Farce and a total waste of time,'” Lada reported.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame AD blasts CFP bracket snub, says ‘there is no explanation’
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