Notre Dame is mad at everyone after being excluded from the CFP, but is their anger justified?
On Sunday, Notre Dame was the last school left out of the 12-team College Football Playoff (CFP), and the Fighting Irish did not hide their collective displeasure.
“We feel like the playoff was stolen from our student-athletes,” Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports. “My feelings and the feelings here are just shock and, really, an absolute sense of sadness for our student-athletes. Overwhelming shock and sadness. Like a collective feeling that we were all just punched in the stomach.”
And if the Fighting Irish were punched in the stomach, Bevacqua made sure to roll up his sleeves this week and punch back. He showed his anger at the CFP committee and ESPN for the weekly CFP ranking show it airs every Tuesday during the second half of the season. Notre Dame was ranked 10th on Dec. 2, the last ranking before the official tournament field was unveiled, one spot behind Alabama. And even though Alabama lost 28-7 to Georgia on December 6 in the SEC championship game, the Crimson Tide remained in ninth and Miami jumped from 12th to 10th even though neither the Hurricanes or the Irish played since Dec. 2.
“Any rankings or show prior to this last one is an absolute joke and a waste of time,” Bevacqua continued. “Why put these young student-athletes through these false emotions just to pull the rug out from underneath them having not played a game in two weeks and then a group of people in a room shatter their dreams without explanation?”
Bevacqua supported the team’s decision to decline an invitation to the Pop-Tarts Bowl, where it would’ve played BYU. The snub will result in a ratings blow to ESPN, which televises that game and has the media rights for the CFP. Notre Dame also has a decades-old media rights deal with NBC, while ESPN pays the SEC as part of a 10-year, $3 billion media rights deal. Whether that had anything to do with Notre Dame’s exclusion from the CFP, only the selection committee truly knows.
“I’m sure anger at the College Football Selection Committee and ESPN was a factor,” Extra Points’ Matt Brown told Boardroom about Notre Dame’s decision to opt out of its bowl game, “but I couldn’t tell you how much of a factor it was.”
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Despite being an independent in football, Notre Dame is a member of the ACC in all other sports and as part of that agreement plays a certain number of games against ACC teams each season on the gridiron. Bevacqua became upset at the conference for supporting Miami’s CFP candidacy over his school’s, perhaps ignoring the fact that the Hurricanes defeated the Irish to start the season.
And if Bevacqua is serious about this damaged relationship between school and conference, could Notre Dame leave the ACC and forge a similar arrangement with a different, more significant football conference like the SEC or Big Ten? Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark this week called Bevacqua’s behavior “egregious,” and said that he’s “totally out of bounds in his approach.” If one Yahoo Sports report this week is correct, Yormark is not alone in his assessment of not just Bevacqua’s actions but the football program as a whole.
“Athletic directors in other leagues,” the report said, “are threatening to freeze them out of future schedules.”
That threat became even more pronounced after Sunday, when Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports that Notre Dame signed a Memorandum Of Understanding with the College Football Playoff that if Notre Dame is ranked in the top 12 of the CFP rankings, it will be assured of a playoff spot moving forward. Unsurprisingly, that disclosure rubbed a lot of other schools the wrong way.
Ultimately, Notre Dame lost its first two games of the season to Miami and Texas A&M, the only two teams that reached the CFP that the Irish played in 2025. It won its final 10, but none of those teams were ranked in the top 15. Like every other team, Notre Dame has to schedule well and win enough games to merit inclusion in the CFP. And, despite the school’s actions this week, kicking and screaming won’t help its cause.
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