CFP Committee Got It Right Putting Miami In Over Notre Dame

But it wasn’t a perfect day for the Selection Committee

Miami fans woke up Sunday and saw something they may not have expected from the College Football Playoff selection committee: accountability for a head-to-head result. In choosing Miami over Notre Dame for a College Football Playoffff berth, the committee finally rewarded what happened on the field in Week 1, not just vibes and brand power.

Miami and Notre Dame finished with identical 10-2 records and no conference title game appearance. When résumés look that similar, the head-to-head result in Miami Gardens has to carry real weight. The Hurricanes beat Notre Dame in a primetime thriller, with a sold-out Hard Rock crowd and clutch plays late from Carson Beck and Malachi Toney. Ignoring that game would have sent a terrible message. Notre Dame can complain about timing and optics, but every player in that locker room understands the scoreboard from Aug. 31 never disappeared.

That said, the entire debate grew out of an ACC problem, not a Miami problem. The league’s ridiculous tiebreaker system kept a top-12 Miami team out of the ACC Title Game while 7-5 Duke survived a five-way tie at 6-2 in conference play. The ACC leaned on combined conference opponents’ win percentage and never once consulted the College Football Playoff rankings, even though those rankings effectively determine the sport’s postseason.

That process pushed unranked Duke into the title game, then delivered an 8-5 champion with no realistic playoff case, while Miami sat home as the league’s best shot at CFP relevance. If the ACC had used a modern tiebreaker that valued playoff positioning, Miami likely travels to Charlotte, plays for an automatic bid, and renders this whole Hurricanes-vs-Irish fight irrelevant. The committee bailed the conference out.

Then comes Alabama. Georgia dominated the SEC Championship Game from kickoff through the final whistle, cruising to a 28-7 win and holding the Tide scoreless until the 4th quarter. Alabama still landed at No. 9 in the final rankings and grabbed a playoff spot with a 10-3 record and three double-digit losses.

Can you defend that? Maybe, if you lean heavily on strength of schedule and a previous win over Georgia. However, the committee just punished BYU for a blowout loss in the Big 12 title game while Alabama essentially skated after a similar beatdown. That double standard looks worse than Miami leapfrogging Notre Dame.

From a Miami vantage point, the cleanest fix would have dropped Alabama out, moved everyone up one slot, and kept the Hurricanes ahead of Notre Dame based on that head-to-head result. That approach would have rewarded conference titles, preserved accountability for Atlanta, and still honored what Miami earned back on Labor Day weekend.

The committee did not deliver that level of consistency. Still, on the narrow question that matters most in Coral Gables — Miami or Notre Dame — the group landed on the only defensible answer. The Hurricanes scheduled the Irish, beat them, finished with the same record, and now carry the ACC’s lone banner into the playoff.