Last week, most observers felt Notre Dame was much closer to the #4 ranking the AP gave them than the #11 ranking the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee gave them.
This week, the selection committee agreed.
Fresh off defeating the #1 team in the land, Notre Dame soared from 11 to 5, just one spot away from home-field advantage and a bye in the CFP. Miami, meanwhile, had a steeper-than-expected fall to 7.
During his Q&A session with ESPN’s Rece Davis, CFP Selection Committee Chairman Hunter Yurachek explained why voters dropped Miami outside the top 5.
“Miami didn’t look great early in the game, and the quarterback, Mensah, had a costly turnover late. They got dominated by Notre Dame, and their ranking reflects that,” Yurachek said.
Notre Dame entered the game missing five defensive starters. Despite that, the Irish held the Hurricanes to three points on six possessions. Miami did indeed get some offense going in the second half. But all three Miami touchdowns came when either Notre Dame star cornerback Leonard Moore was out of the game, or when #3 corner Jayden Sanders was off the field.
Notre Dame’s jump and Miami’s fall were not the only storylines from the game.
Defending champion Indiana, which the committee shockingly ranked fourth in last week’s rankings despite lacking a signature win and needing overtime to beat two unranked teams, was knocked back to ninth. That move likely won’t sit well with Hoosier head coach Curt Cignetti, who has already made it clear he believes the committee harbors a strong SEC bias.
However, given that Indiana barely escaped Nebraska and recently benched their quarterback, a course correction was clearly needed. In any event, Cignetti will have a chance to prove the committee wrong this weekend when the USC Trojans come to town.
While the committee righted some wrongs from last week, they still left fans with some head scratchers.
Not least among them was the decision to rank Tennessee eighth and Alabama, a team they beat by 16 points, third.
Davis also grilled Yurachek over that decision.
“They’re No. 1 in record strength, No. 1 in schedule strength,” he said of the Crimson Tide. “They have four what we call quality wins because we continue to call that win against Mississippi State earlier in the year when they had Kamario Taylor on their team; they were 4-0. Alabama went there and won that game. Alabama, we believe, deserves to be the No. 3 team in the country.”
Yurachek continued, “Alabama was in that first pool. Tennessee was not in that first pool. Tennessee has got a couple of quality wins—the win they just had at Kentucky and obviously the win they have against Alabama. They have three wins against teams their schedule strength is 110 and above.
“When you look at their schedule compared to Alabama’s schedule, the committee feels like—and so do the metrics—that Alabama has got a stronger schedule. That’s why Alabama was in that first pool of teams, and Tennessee was not.”
It can also be reasonably argued that dropping BYU only one spot after losing to Utah is light treatment.
Yes, BYU does have a win over Notre Dame. However, since then, they lost to an unranked team in UCF, probably would have lost to an unranked Arizona State had it not been for an errant touchdown awarded to them the at the Big 12, acknowledged as a blown call, and a loss to rival Utah in which BYU QB Bear Bachmeier threw four interceptions.
How does Miami drop six spots for losing to the #5 team in the country on the road without their best player, while BYU only loses one spot for a road loss to the #2 team while relatively healthy?
The next batch of CFP rankings will come out on November 17.
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