How did Miami football make CFP? Committee re-watched Notre Dame game

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The Miami Hurricanes were behind Notre Dame in everyone one of the previous 2025 College Football Playoff rankings. That is, until the one that mattered most was released.

Miami was ranked 10th, one spot ahead of Notre Dame, for the final at-large spot in the 12-team tournament, scheduled to begin on Dec. 19. The Hurricanes will visit Texas A&M for its first-round matchup at noon Dec. 20 (ABC, ESPN).

So, how did the Hurricanes, who were 12th last week jump Notre Dame, which was 10th? Miami has Texas Tech to thank.

CFP committee chair explains rankings

As Arkansas athletic director and CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek explained on ESPN's bracket unveil, BYU's loss to Texas Tech in Saturday's Big 12 championship game knocked the Cougars out of the 11 spot in their rankings, placing the Fighting Irish and Hurricanes next to one another for the first time.

"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," Yurachek said. "And you look at those two teams on paper, and they are almost equal in schedule strength, in common opponents, the results against their common opponents. But the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head-to-head.

"I charged the committee members to go back and watch that game," Yurachek said of Miami's 27-24 win at Hard Rock Stadium on Aug. 31. "We got some interesting debate on what that game looked like. With that in mind, we gave Miami the nod over Notre Dame into that 10 spot."

So wait, Miami's better than Notre Dame now?

ESPN host Rece Davis then asked that if Miami and Notre Dame had been in the same vicinity of ranking in the last few weeks, why then would head-to-head only really be a factor now since those teams' resumes appeared similar for some time?

Yurachek reminded Davis that Miami had just lost two of their last three when the first CFP rankings were released in the first week of November. They were then 18th, and only a few spots head of Louisville, one of the teams that beat Miami this season.

For the sake of argument, Notre Dame, which began the season 0-2 but was in the middle of a 10-game winning streak when the rankings were released, started 10th in the rankings, moved up to ninth for a couple of weeks, then back down to 10th before ultimately falling to 11th.

"Not until they got to close proximity, side-by-side, with the move of BYU, were we able to evaluate just those two teams side-by-side," Yurachek said.

"As we said for last week's rankings, for last week we thought Notre Dame was better than BYU and deserved to be ranked ahead of BYU, and we thought BYU deserved to be ranked higher than Miami, and that's how that laid out. After the championship game in the Big 12 and the way BYU performed against Texas Tech, we felt like Miami should be ranked ahead of BYU and then you had the direct head-to-head comparison of those teams at 10 and 11 in our poll."

ACC representation for 2025 College Football Playoff

If Miami didn't get into the playoff, there wouldn't have been an ACC representative in the 12-team bracket. Duke, with five losses, knocked off Virginia in the conference title game, but conference champs Tulane and James Madison got two of the five champion spots along with Indiana, Georgia and Texas Tech.

Yurachek said getting an ACC team was not a factor for the committee. They are there to rank the top 25 teams and however the chips lay from there is someone else's problem.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: How Miami football jumped Notre Dame for College Football Playoff spot

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