Miami’s football team's path into the College Football Playoff ended exactly where its argument started: with Notre Dame. The CFP committee finally flipped the Hurricanes over the Irish on Selection Sunday, sliding Miami into the field as the No. 10 seed and leaving Notre Dame on the outside.
Chair Hunter Yurachek said that once Miami was moved ahead of BYU, the long-awaited side-by-side comparison with Notre Dame came down to one thing: the head-to-head win in Week 1.
With both teams sitting on similar resumes and two losses apiece, that early Hurricanes victory became the deciding metric and punched Miami’s ticket to a December 20 opener against No. 7 Texas A&M.
Inside the program, Mario Cristobal never sounded like a coach bracing for disappointment. Speaking to ESPN as the reveal unfolded, he admitted there was “a little bit of anxiety,” but added, “overall, we felt really confident. We felt confident because as long as everybody just kind of abided by the criteria that we would be in a good place,” as Manny Navarro relayed on X.
In other words, if the committee did what it said it valued, Miami believed the result would take care of itself.
Cristobal had already gone on the offensive before the rankings dropped, telling reporters he felt like he was “in court, defending a case that never should have been brought… if we were solely looking at the facts.”
The “facts,” in his view, were simple: Miami beat Notre Dame head-to-head, both teams finished with two losses, and the Hurricanes closed with four straight wins after setbacks to Louisville and SMU in ACC play. The Irish rattled off 10 straight victories after losing to Miami and Texas A&M, but never got that head-to-head blemish back.
Now Miami stands as the ACC’s lone representative in the 12-team field, a quirky twist in a year when Virginia and Duke reached the conference title game but stayed home from the playoff.
Cristobal’s confidence has been vindicated, but the real judgment comes next: whether the Hurricanes can prove the committee right when they finally step onto the CFP stage against Texas A&M.
