Notre Dame falls in CFP rankings again, gets left out of playoff while Alabama, Miami get in
By MARK LONG Despite winning every challenge for nearly three months No Notre Dame dropped a spot in the final College Football Playoff rankings Sunday and was left out of the -team bracket entirely It was a hard fall from the couch The Fighting Irish which won its last games by an average of nearly points watched championship weekend from afar idle as an independent with no options to impress the selection committee one last time in a league title meeting It surely will prompt cries of injustice from coast to coast with the loudest of those coming from South Bend Indiana Athletic director Pete Bevacqua and coach Marcus Freeman had taken the high road in latest weeks avoiding too much lobbying and believing their winning streak would be enough to earn a berth over Alabama Miami - ended up knocking the Irish - out With BYU losing to Texas Tech in the Big title challenge the committee ranked Miami and Notre Dame next to each other and turned to the head-to-head metric to determine which one would get the No seed It was Miami which beat Notre Dame - in Week of the regular season The Hurricanes will play at Texas A M in the opening round of the playoff The Irish will wait for a bowl assignment likely the Pop Tarts Bowl in Orlando on Dec No BYU No Vanderbilt and No Texas and to a lesser extent Atlantic Coast Conference champion Duke are sure to have issues with the final CFP standings too But no one has a bigger gripe than Notre Dame which dropped one spot after beating Stanford - and then fell another while not playing Fans online already started demanding the Irish boycott their bowl competition cancel their scheduling agreement with the ACC and reassess future slates Certain called for Bevacqua to be fired Notre Dame lost consecutive games to open the season against teams that made the playoff Miami and Texas A M by a combined four points and has been as good as anyone in the country since Related Articles Final Pac- power rankings Boise State vaults SDSU for fake title CFP forecast Committee must shun Notre Dame Miami or Alabama Recruiting winners and losers USC BYU Oregon thrive Colorado struggles QB Sagapolutele staying in Berkeley I believe in Cal and what this football venture is capable of Memorial for Coach John Beam who shaped generations of Oakland athletes matches sports icon s spirit Alabama meanwhile became the first three-loss association to make the CFP field Selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek explained the logic after the Crimson Tide lost - to Georgia in the SEC championship match Their strength of schedule was the highest in the top and it felt like in spite of their performance the preceding day in the conference championship they deserve to stay within that nine spot he explained Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top throughout the season Sign up here and here AP News mobile app AP college football https apnews com hub ap-top- -college-football-poll and https apnews com hub college-football
