Notre Dame is the talk of college football, and unfortunately, it's not for good reasons if you're the Irish.
Firstly and certainly more importantly, Notre Dame inexplicably fell out of the College Football Playoff (CFP) field in favor of Miami despite neither team playing between the time the committee ranked ND ahead of Miami (despite the ‘Canes' head-to-head win) and when it flipped the teams' respective spots, snubbing the Irish in the process. Secondly, in the aftermath of missing the playoff, Notre Dame rejected a bowl game invite, sending some fans and media members into a frenzy.
While discussing the fallout of Notre Dame's failed playoff bid, Irish athletic director Pete Bevacqua has been expectedly vocal, lashing out at the committee and the ACC (with which ND has a partnership), and, to hopefully avoid another situation like this for his school, he is advocating for another expansion of the CFP as well.
“I firmly believe that the right answer is 16 teams with five automatic qualifiers and 11 at large,” Bevacqua said on the ‘Dan Patrick Show'. “And maybe there’s no perfect answers. Think about this here, Dan: say there were four teams, there wouldn't be any arguments. Those four teams, I think that’s crystal clear those are the right four teams. I don’t think anybody would argue. So four, 12, 14, 16… I happen to think 16 is the answer. I think the majority, the vast — the overwhelming majority of the people in the college football management committee room agree with me.”
Bevacqua said that anything more than 16, in his opinion, would further devalue the regular season, which he said could be seen this year. If the CFP had invited 16 teams this year, including G5 conference champions Tulane and James Madison, Notre Dame, BYU, Texas, and Vanderbilt would have made it into the playoff.
Regardless of the number, though, it appears Notre Dame will get ‘priority', so to speak, moving forward in CFP discussions. That is because the Irish have an agreement that starting next year, if they are ranked 13th or better in the final rankings, they will be guaranteed one of the 12 slots in the playoff.
The clause, which had gone undisclosed until recently, has caused quite a bit of a stir around the country since it would have, in theory, locked out Miami this year. It remains to be seen if conferences, of which Notre Dame is famously not a part, will demand a similar clause for their league champion to prevent being left out entirely, as the ACC almost was.
