After College Football Playoff snub, Notre Dame says it won't play in a bowl game

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Notre Dame will not play in a bowl game after it was left out of the College Football Playoff.

The team said in a statement Sunday afternoon that it had decided to end its season.

“As a team, we’ve decided to withdraw our name from consideration for a bowl game following the 2025 season,” the statement said. “We appreciate all the support from our families and fans, and we’re hoping to bring the 12th national title to South Bend in 2026.”

Notre Dame entered Sunday ranked 10th in the College Football Playoff rankings and in line for the final at-large spot. However, the CFP selection committee chose to put Miami in the playoff over Notre Dame and moved the Hurricanes ahead of the Fighting Irish in the rankings for the first time all season.

Miami beat Notre Dame in Week 1 and the two teams finished with identical 10-2 records. 

Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger that the team was shocked to see Miami get into the playoff field and felt like a playoff bid had been stolen.

“There is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the outcome,” Bevacqua said. “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-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.”

Notre Dame became the third team to decline a bowl bid on Sunday afternoon. Both Kansas State and Iowa State previously said they weren't going to bowl games after coaching changes. KSU coach Chris Klieman retired and ISU coach Matt Campbell has been hired at Penn State. The Big 12 fined each school $500,000 for not going to a bowl game.

CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said after the rankings were revealed Sunday that the committee didn't take Miami's win over Notre Dame into account until after BYU lost the Big 12 title game on Saturday.

BYU was No. 11 in the rankings ahead of Miami at No. 12. Once the Cougars lost and the committee moved BYU down, then it actually looked at the head-to-head win as a tiebreaker. 

"As I mentioned last week in last week's rankings, we thought Notre Dame was better than BYU and deserved to be ranked higher than BYU and we thought BYU deserved to be ranked higher than Miami, which is the way that laid out," Yurachek said on ESPN. "After the championship game in the Big 12 and the way that BYU performed again against Texas Tech, we felt Miami deserved to be ranked ahead of BYU. And then you had the direct head-to-head comparison of those teams, Miami and Notre Dame, sitting respectively at No. 10 and 11 in our poll."

Miami was ranked at No. 18 in the first set of CFP rankings on Nov. 4 and worked its way up to the top 10 over the six sets of rankings. Notre Dame was in the top 10 of every set of rankings until Sunday.

That, Bevecqua said, was very confusing to the Fighting Irish.

“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 Sunday. What’s the point of doing anything prior to that?”

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