CFP committee chair says Notre Dame is ahead of Miami because of quality of losses

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For weeks, as the College Football Playoff selection committee has been unveiling weekly rankings, a debate has waged on — how much should Miami’s head-to-head win against Notre Dame factor into where the Hurricanes and Fighting Irish are placed inside the committee’s top 25?

This week, about three weeks before the 12-team field will be set, fans across the country got an answer on where things stand.

In the third batch of rankings from the committee, Notre Dame was four spots ahead of Miami, with the former at No. 9 and the latter at No. 13 (there was actually a larger gap last week, when the Hurricanes were No. 15 and the Fighting Irish were No. 9).

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When asked by ESPN’s Rece Davis how close Miami was to Notre Dame in the committee’s estimation, Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, the newly appointed committee chair, pointed not to the Hurricanes’ 27-24 win against the Fighting Irish on Aug. 31, but the teams’ respective losses.

“I think when you look, Rece, at Miami, you really look at the losses of those two teams,” Yurachek said on the ESPN broadcast. “Miami has lost to two unranked teams. Notre Dame has lost to two teams that are ranked in our top 13. We really haven’t compared those two teams. They haven’t been in similar comparable pools to date. But Miami is creeping up into that range where they will be compared to Notre Dame if something happens above them.”

Both teams enter their Week 13 games with identical 8-2 records. Notre Dame’s two losses, as Yurachek mentioned, came against No. 13 Miami and No. 3 Texas A&M, with the defeats coming by a combined four points.

But while the Hurricanes have losses to two teams outside the committee’s top 25, they were hardly inexcusable setbacks. Miami’s first loss came against a Louisville team that, as recently as eight days ago, was No. 15 in the committee’s rankings. Its other loss, on the road to SMU in overtime, was against a squad that’s 7-3 and is receiving the second-most votes of teams outside the top 25 in the latest US LBM Coaches Poll. Like Notre Dame, the Hurricanes’ two losses were painfully close, being decided by a combined nine points.

Then, of course, there’s the matter of Miami’s Week 1 win. While its value could be minimized since it happened more than two months ago, head-to-head results are frequently a cherished data point when trying to do something as inherently subjective as ranking college football teams.

In the victory, Miami outgained Notre Dame 339-314 and led by 14 points in the fourth quarter before the Fighting Irish mounted a late comeback to tie it. A 47-yard field goal from Hurricanes kicker Carter Davis with 1:04 remaining ultimately secured the win.

The committee’s rankings aren’t an outlier. Notre Dame, at No. 9, is six spots ahead of Miami in the Coaches Poll and is five spots ahead of the Hurricanes in ESPN’s SP+ rankings. Additionally, Miami is six spots behind the Fighting Irish in ESPN’s strength of record rankings and 14 spots behind them in strength of schedule.

For both teams, there’s something of a silver lining — if the season ended today, and based on the committee’s latest rankings, they’d both be in the playoff.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CFP committee chair: Notre Dame ahead of Miami because of quality of losses

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