By Owain Jones

Drama reigns supreme in college football, and the college football playoff committee delivered it in droves in the selection show on Sunday.

The College Football Playoff selection committee’s decision to exclude Notre Dame, elevate Miami, and retain Alabama at No. 9 will be debated for years. The fallout has already begun. Notre Dame withdrew its name from bowl game consideration just hours after the selections were announced, and the controversy surrounding the committee’s choices has exposed fundamental flaws in how the committee communicates its decision-making process.

An Impossible Choice: Why No Answer Would Satisfy Everyone

Twelve years into the College Football Playoff, the committee was tasked with its toughest decision yet. It was genuinely impossible to get right, because “right” depends entirely on which metrics you prioritize and your underlying narrative and allegiances. The nature of subjective decisions means someone will always be unhappy, and whichever way the committee landed, one program would feel aggrieved.

That team has been Notre Dame, who are rightly furious at the decision. But all three of Notre Dame, Miami, and Alabama could have equally been in or out of the 12-team playoff field.

Alabama’s case to be in the Playoff centred on the quality of its résumé and the consequences of playing championship games. Alabama owns one of the best wins of any team in the country, against the very same Georgia team that just throttled it, on the road. Furthermore, Alabama’s second-best win, at home against Vanderbilt, is also better than any win on Notre Dame’s résumé. Their final loss, the one that put them squarely on the bubble, came in the SEC Championship Game while Miami and Notre Dame watched from home.

It doesn’t sit right for teams to be punished for playing conference title games, which is precisely what would have happened had Alabama been excluded. Yet they were overwhelmed by Georgia 28-7, looking completely outclassed in a game that raised serious questions about whether they belonged among the nation’s elite twelve teams.

Notre Dame’s case rested on momentum, quality losses, and consistency throughout the ranking process. The committee made it painstakingly clear through their first five sets of playoff rankings that Notre Dame was viewed as superior to Miami despite the head-to-head result in the season opener. The Fighting Irish were already ranked No. 10 heading into championship weekend and don’t play a conference title game, meaning they had no opportunity to improve their résumé further.

They lost to Texas A&M and Miami by a combined four points, with both defeats coming in the opening stages of the season against teams that made the playoff, then won 10 straight games, all by double digits. Notre Dame was playing their best football late in the season and represented a fundamentally different side than the one that started 0-2. The committee had ranked them ahead of Miami every single week until the final rankings, creating an expectation that the Irish were safely in.

Miami’s case centered on the most basic principle in sports: head-to-head results should matter. Miami beat Notre Dame 27-24 in Week 1, and many fans were uncomfortable with the Hurricanes being ranked behind the Irish heading into conference championship weekend despite holding that direct victory. Both teams finished 10-2, with similar strength-of-schedule metrics and comparable results against common opponents. However, their losses to unranked opponents in Wake Forest and Louisville raised concerns about consistency.

The critical point is that all three have legitimate grounds for exclusion.

Alabama was beaten convincingly in the SEC Championship Game and lost to a common opponent of Miami’s in Florida State. Miami had beaten that same Florida State team and defeated Notre Dame, but lost two games to unranked opponents that should have been chalk wins. Notre Dame lost to Miami, eliminating any head-to-head tiebreaker advantage, and their best wins don’t match Alabama’s victory over Georgia in Athens.

But the committee’s previous ranking of these three teams led many to expect Notre Dame to be included automatically. Bookmakers had them among the favorites to make the event. But the committee had set their downfall up, whether intentionally or not.

CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said after the rankings were revealed Sunday that the committee didn’t take Miami’s win over Notre Dame into account until after BYU lost the Big 12 title game on Saturday. “Once we moved Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for,” Yurachek said.

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

The committee had said they would take into account Miami and Notre Dame’s head-to-head once they were ranked back-to-back. But BYU was ranked between them at No. 11, with Miami at No. 12. However, BYU was playing in the Big 12 Championship Game against Texas Tech, whom they had already lost to this season.

If they had won that game, they would have moved up by virtue of beating a top-4 team. But if they lost to the Red Raiders for a second time, they were always going to fall.

Therefore, as the Fighting Irish and Hurricanes were not playing over the weekend, they were always going to end up next to each other in the final rankings once BYU had competed for the Big 12 championship. The head-to-head comparison was already underway in the public eye and became inevitable once Texas Tech won the Big 12 title game.

The problem is that the committee has been inconsistent in its communication and decision-making. In the first ranking, Notre Dame was eight spots ahead of Miami. Both won out, both by significant margins, and each week along the way, Notre Dame remained ahead of Miami. Last week, Alabama (fresh off a narrow victory in the Iron Bowl) leapfrogged Notre Dame despite the Irish dominating Stanford 49-20. A questionable decision.

Add in that the committee spent five weeks establishing that Notre Dame was superior to Miami, then reversed course in the final rankings when both teams were idle. It begs the question: if Miami’s head-to-head victory mattered this much, why didn’t it matter in November?

Most notably, when it comes to Alabama, if they are going to use the excuse of dropping BYU to set this up, then by the same logic, Alabama should have dropped as well. After BYU lost its conference championship, the Cougars fell in the rankings, unlike Alabama after a similar blowout defeat.

The Tide lost its conference championship game by 21 points and was uncompetitive from the opening drive, but didn’t move from No. 9. They’ve lost three games, including a disastrous loss to Florida State (a team that finished 5-6). Comparatively, BYU lost to Texas Tech twice and dropped. By what consistent logic does BYU fall for losing a conference championship while Alabama holds steady after getting destroyed in theirs?

You can justify dropping teams, but whether you believe the committee’s decision was fair comes down to whether you believe Alabama was right not to be dropped for convincingly losing a conference championship, but BYU was right to be.

However, the committee had a history of not penalizing conference championship game runners-up. Last season, they included SMU at Alabama’s expense after the Mustangs lost the ACC Championship Game to Clemson.

As stated, dropping BYU is justifiable given that they lost to the same team twice, but by the same logic, dropping Alabama would have been consistent as well. They were thoroughly dominated and showed they couldn’t compete with elite competition with a non-existent run game.

However, if results don’t matter, then what is the point in playing the games? And this comes down to the consequences.

“As a team, we’ve decided to withdraw our name from consideration for a bowl game following the 2025 season,” Notre Dame announced. Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua expressed frustration with the process, telling ESPN’s Jen Lada that the team felt as if it had the rug pulled out from under it. Notre Dame has displayed immense frustration and opted out of bowl season entirely.

Whereas if Alabama were left out, that would have been because they lost a conference championship game, and what would that mean for conference championships moving forward?

The postseason is already segmented and fractured between the playoff, the transfer portal, and bowl games, which appear to be increasingly meaningless to programs. Punishing teams for playing conference championship games while rewarding teams that sat home would create the wrong incentives and challenging optics that could ultimately destroy conference championships altogether. If losing a championship game costs you a playoff spot, why risk playing in it at all?

Was the Right Decision Made? It Depends on Your Perspective

Whatever decision the committee made would have been right or wrong, depending on perspective. Someone was always going to be left at the altar, and the case they make will be legitimate. When a decision is subjective, this will always happen.

And the key to this is that the narrative can be spun whichever way you prefer. If you believe head-to-head results are paramount, Miami deserved the spot. If you believe recent performance and consistency throughout the ranking process matter most, Notre Dame got screwed. If you believe resume quality and strength of schedule trump everything else, Alabama earned its place. It’s difficult to argue against any of these positions because each has merit.

The UK & Ireland College Football Rankings had Alabama slipping after the Georgia loss, and that may have made the most sense in the moment.

Dropping Alabama to No. 11 or 12 would have been internally consistent with how BYU was treated and would have rewarded both Miami (head-to-head win) and Notre Dame (ranked higher all season).

But the consequences of doing so would have had real ramifications for the sport, including potential discussions about ending conference championships, which wouldn’t have been beneficial for anyone.

Bowl season is already increasingly irrelevant as players opt out for the transfer portal or NFL Draft preparation. If conference championship games become liabilities rather than opportunities, we’ll lose one of college football’s most exciting weekends.

However, the committee is tasked with making the right decision, no matter the consequences. But when decisions are subjective, each member will have their own view and internal moral compass. The 14-member committee gives the illusion of fairness to a sport that has always been chaotic, but life and internal politics rarely work in such straightforward pathways.

All it takes is for one or two members to change their mind for a decision this close to swing the other way.

The question is, why did the decision to have Notre Dame in front of Miami change?

There were no further data points for Notre Dame or Miami, as they didn’t play over the weekend. The data points were for Alabama (who lost convincingly) and BYU (who lost for the second time to the same opponent), and the consequences of those decisions led to Notre Dame and Miami being back-to-back.

Once they were adjacent in the rankings, the committee had backed itself into a corner regarding whether to swap them based on head-to-head results, which is probably correct.

If results don’t matter, why even play the games?

It then comes down to whether Alabama should have been dropped alongside BYU. Whether that is right or wrong depends on each person.

In the end, the final rankings are not the issue. If this had been the only rankings release for the year, with Miami at No. 10 and Notre Dame at No. 11, it would be difficult to argue against the logic. Miami beat Notre Dame. They have identical records. They performed similarly against common opponents. The head-to-head tiebreaker makes perfect sense.

The issue is with the messaging and the inconsistency in decision-making week to week. The committee spent five weeks saying Notre Dame was better, then changed course without either team playing. That inconsistency, not the final decision itself, is what makes this feel arbitrary.

College football has always thrived on controversy, and Selection Sunday delivered spectacularly. The committee made a defensible choice that will be debated endlessly. Whether they got it right depends entirely on which principles you value most, and that’s precisely the problem with subjective decision-making in a sport desperate for objective clarity.

OWAIN JONES

college football & NFL DRAFT ANALYST

OWAIN jones COVERS EVERYTHING college football & NFL DRAFT. COMING WITH PLENTY OF EXPERIENCE, OWAIN was PREVIOUSLY a writer for pfsn and WAS THE NFL DRAFT EDITOR AT NINETY-NINE YARDS WHERE HE CREATED DRAFT TALK, YOU CAN FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @OwainJonesCFB

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