Notre Dame lost all sympathy after AD Pete Bevacqua's whining | D'Angelo
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Only in college football can Notre Dame, the playoff committee and the ACC all come out looking bad … in a year in which the committee, for the most part, got it right.
Let me explain.
Whining Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua made it much worse for Irish
Notre Dame was the sympathetic figure at first, but not because Miami was ahead of it in the final ranking. It was because of the inexplicable process that had the Irish ahead of the Hurricanes for five consecutive weeks before Miami suddenly jumped Notre Dame in the final ranking – after a weekend in which neither team played.
And then CFP chair Hunter Yurachek making it worse by trying to explain how two teams’ head-to-head is essentially irrelevant … until they are side-by-side in the ranking? That prompted him to ask the committee to re-watch Miami’s 27-24 victory over Notre Dame in Week 1.
Side note: Guess he didn’t have the committee watch Florida State‘s 31-17 domination of Alabama in Week 1.
I actually felt some sympathy for the Irish, until AD Pete Bevacqua decided to fill the airwaves with enough whining to, well, wake up the echoes.
Speaking on “The Dan Patrick Show,” Bevacqua expressed how disappointed he was in the ACC for, gasp, advocating for Miami, a member program in all sports, over poor Notre Dame, an elitist program that has snubbed the ACC in football even while receiving a sweetheart deal from the conference in all other sports.
The ACC provides Notre Dame a home for all of its varsity sports besides football and men’s hockey. Think the Big Ten or SEC would allow Notre Dame into its conference for everything but football?
Statues will be built of Lane Kiffin at Tennessee and Ole’ Miss before that happens.
And in 2020, when Notre Dame, an Independent in football, suddenly needed a partner because of the craziness happening during the pandemic, the ACC stepped up and allowed the Fighting Irish to join as a football member for one season.
Now?
“We were mystified by the actions of the conference to attack their biggest, really, partner in football and a member of their conference in 24 of our other sports,” Bevacqua said about a conference his university has snubbed when it comes to football. “They have certainly done permanent damage to the relationship between the conference and Notre Dame.
“We didn’t appreciate the fact that we were singled out repeatedly and compared to Miami. Not by Miami; Miami has every right to do that. But it raised a lot of eyebrows here that the conference was taking shots at us.”
So, Notre Dame wants its stew and to eat it, too.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, who has his own issues, said in a statement the conference stands behind its efforts “to support and advocate for all 17 of our football-playing member institutions.”
That leads us to Notre Dame Whining Part II.
Nobody in recent college football history was hosed more than Florida State in 2023. The Seminoles did everything they could (unlike Notre Dame this season) to assure a spot in, what was then, a four-team playoff, by winning every game.
Instead, they will forever remain the lone undefeated team from a power conference to be snubbed.
The Seminoles flew to South Florida and, knowing they would get steamrolled by Georgia after massive opt out, played in the Orange Bowl.
They didn’t sulk and take their football and go home … like Notre Dame is doing.
Time for CFB Playoff Committee to take long look at the process
In the first CFB playoff reveal, Miami and Notre Dame were 6-2 with Miami having defeated the Irish. Notre Dame was ranked 10th, Miami 18th.
That margin shrunk to six spots the next week, then to four, to three and two (ND No. 10, UM No. 12) in the penultimate ranking.
Then, with neither team playing on championship weekend (more on that later), Miami gained three spots on Notre Dame, jumping to No. 10, one ahead of the Irish.
This after both teams won their final four games since the first ranking. Both played two teams with winning records during that span. And Notre Dame’s average margin of victory was 38.3 points, Miami’s 27.5.
Again, in the end the committee members got it right. But the process did much more damage to their credibility than if they had stuck with their reasoning for having Notre Dame above Miami initially and kept it that way.
Yurachek then made it worse with this talking point.
“Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU we had that side-by-side comparison that everyone had been hungry for with Notre Dame and Miami,” he said about the final debate.
So teams are not allowed to be compared to one another unless they are side-by-side in the ranking?
I’m not against a committee deciding this playoff field. We’ve had two years of a 12-team playoff (soon to be 16) and there has been very little debate when it comes to all but a couple of teams, which is inevitable. And every team that complains about getting left out of the 10th or 11th or 12th spot could have done something about it and not lost two or more games.
It is not perfect. But if what we saw with Miami and Notre Dame is part of the process, please, take the next nine months to reevaluate and make sure that process is replaced by something that makes sense.
ACC a hot mess, and tiebreaker rule must go
Here is all you need to know about the ACC:
The winner of the its championship game (Duke) is not in the playoff. A team that didn’t qualify for the title game (Miami) is the final field of 12.
The league would have been in crisis mode had Miami not snuck into the playoff. But that flip with Notre Dame prevented the ACC from suffering the ultimate embarrassment of being shut out of the playoff.
The ACC’s worst nightmare happened in Charlotte when five-loss and unranked Duke defeated Virginia. That left Duke as the sixth-highest ranked conference champion and out of the playoff, while No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison are in.
Yes, James Madison of the Sun Belt Conference took a spot from the ACC champion.
How’s that look for the conference and Phillips?
And we thought it could not get any worse after just four ACC teams were selected for the 2025 Men’s Basketball Tournament.
No one in the league had foresight to figure out this tiebreaker rule could be a problem? When Duke, with five losses, is playing in the championship game while No. 12 (at that time) Miami, with two losses, is sitting home, something is broken.
While the playoff committee is reevaluating its process this summer, the ACC must do the same with its tiebreaking rules.
Only in college football.
Tom D’Angelo is a senior sports columnist and reporter for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua should have shut up instead of whining
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