Welp… This sucks.
First things first, be honest. You. Yes, you, as a Notre Dame fan. In your heart of hearts, you KNOW that Miami deserved a spot in the CFP ahead of the Irish. The resumes are similar enough that the head-to-head win rightfully carried the day. The double-standard of the 1993 national championship doesn’t make it easier to swallow, but thems the brakes. If that bothers you, then appeal to Notre Dame to just claim that title.
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Go ahead and have the discussion about Notre Dame and Alabama all you want. Totally fair game. But head-to-head still (rightfully) matters.
That means the College Football Playoff Committee did something right. But it also did a lot wrong, which hurts. Notre Dame was a prop in a reality TV drama ever since the first CFP rankings came out. Hell, the Irish were the main prop in a bad prop comedy show; where’s Carrot Top when you need him to put on a better one?
And with all of that said, Notre Dame has no one to blame but itself. I don’t mean for being Independent and forfeiting the chance to get an auto-qualifier with a conference title game. And I don’t mean for partnering with an ACC whose teams are too weak to give the Irish a resume on par with an SEC team’s (that, funny enough, lost to a 5-7 ACC team).
This falls on Marcus Freeman, Mike Denbrock, and Chris Ash for making mistakes that could’ve been avoided.
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All credit to the two defensive coaches atop Notre Dame’s staff for fixing the comedy of errors that was Notre Dame’s defense in its first two-and-a-half games of 2025. But there never should’ve been a comedy of errors.
Screw the (egregious) holding non-call on Texas A&M’s game-winning touchdown, Leonard Moore’s twisted ankle and Tyler Buchner’s botched extra-point hold. If you weren’t ready to play zone coverage in your first and second games without Al Golden, then you shouldn’t have. Plain and simple. The transition could have been gradual, but it wasn’t. And I don’t find it crazy to speculate that Freeman and the staff were so wrapped up in prepping for a Playoff rematch with Ohio State that they overlooked their actual opponents in weeks 1 and 2.
And what’s even worse is failing to learn from Freeman’s own experience. He’s been at Notre Dame for five years, and three of them have started with the Irish being too liberal with defensive rotations early in the season. I don’t want to call out players, but they get paid money now, so I think it’s fair to mention that Karson Hobbs got torched against Miami (but, to be fair, Malachi Toney torched most guys he faced) and then pulled a DJ Brown against A&M.
And as for Denbrock, there’s no guarantee that putting the ball in Jeremiyah Love’s hands more against Miami would have changed the outcome of that game, but it probably wouldn’t have hurt. And then the double-standard of Freeman/Denbrock/Jajuan Seider benching Jadarian Price for a fumble when Malachi Fields was not benched for that—and when we know Love would NEVER be benched if he let the ball slip—just adds to the second-guessing.
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This doesn’t need to be a referendum on Notre Dame football or its coaches. It’s just venting about how the Irish screwed themselves out of a tantalizing opportunity in 2025. The fault lies with putting the ball in the Committee’s court to begin with.
There’s no doubt an 11-1 Notre Dame is in a 12-team field. No reasonable college football follower would even tell you that this 10-2 Irish squad wasn’t one of the 12 best teams in the country, if not top-5. But the Irish have less margin for error in this flawed post-season system. They shouldn’t have let their fate slip out of their own hands and into the ones of 12 jackasses using theirs to do God-knows-what in honor of the SEC in that conference room every week.
That’s on the Irish. And they won’t even get to eat a sentient Pop-Tart as a consolation.
That sucks.
