Playoff committee says Miami, Notre Dame aren’t being directly compared. Why not?
The College Football Playoff selection committee made a big statement with the justification of its latest rankings on Tuesday night.
And it’s not one that favors the Miami Hurricanes.
The Hurricanes checked in at No. 13, up two spots from last week and five spots from their No. 18 post in the initial rankings two weeks ago. That’s noted progress after UM dominated each of its two games in that span — a 38-10 win against Syracuse and 41-7 rout of NC State. However, Miami (8-2, 4-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) is still on the outside looking in of a playoff berth barring the Hurricanes winning the ACC championship, and it will take a handful of things breaking UM’s way just to get to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the conference title game.
But up a little higher, sitting four spots ahead of Miami, are the No. 9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Notre Dame has been higher than Miami in all three rankings thus far.
But Miami has a head-to-head win against Notre Dame, with the Hurricanes beating the Irish 27-24 on Aug. 31 to begin the season.
Clearly, that has to have some impact on the rankings, right? Especially since both teams have 8-2 records?
Apparently not yet, according to CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek.
“We really compare the losses of those two teams,” Yurachek said on ESPN shortly after the rankings came out.
That’s certainly an understandable data point to consider. Miami after all did lose 24-21 to Louisville and 26-20 to SMU — two teams that aren’t in the committee’s rankings — while Notre Dame lost to Miami and an undefeated Texas A&M team.
But again, Notre Dame lost head-to-head to Miami.
So why not also factor what actually happened on the field between two teams with identical records?
“They haven’t been in similar comparative pools to date,” Yurachek said of Miami’s placing in relation to Notre Dame, “but Miami is creeping up into that range where they will be compared to Notre Dame if something happens above them.”
Those comments provide two points in the committee’s decision-making process that are hindering Miami’s chance of making the playoff field:
1.) The committee picks and chooses when head-to-head matchups matter.
2.) Quality losses appear to have more weight than quality wins when comparing teams with identical records.
The committee has three teams ranked between Notre Dame and Miami — No. 10 Alabama, No. 11 BYU and No. 12 Utah.
That gap, Yurachek said, is enough to keep the committee from looking at Miami in the same plane as Notre Dame.
According to the voting process listed on the College Football Playoff website, the selection committee evaluates teams in smaller pools on their way to compiling the entire 25-team ranking. They start with identifying the top four teams (the teams that would get first-round byes in the playoff), then teams that would be ranked Nos. 5-8 (home teams for Round 1), then Nos. 9-12 (road teams for Round 1), Nos. 13-16, Nos. 17-19, Nos. 20-22 and finally Nos. 23-25.
The factors the committee is supposed to take into consideration when distinguishing “otherwise comparable teams” are strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory), and “other relevant factors such as unavailability of key players and coaches that may have affected a team’s performance during the season or likely will affect its postseason performance.”
Based on Yurachek’s comments, by the time the committee slotted in Notre Dame, Miami must not have yet entered the picture.
He mentioned specifically on the ESPN broadcast and an ensuing conference call with reporters that the pecking order for Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Alabama when it came to the Nos. 8, 9 and 10 spots was the most heavily debated topic in determining the ranking this week.
In this scenario, head-to-head was used for Oklahoma and Alabama, with the Sooners getting the nod at No. 8 after Oklahoma beat Alabama 23-21 on Saturday. Notre Dame was ranked ahead of Alabama because, despite Alabama having better wins (notably over No. 4 Georgia and No. 14 Vanderbilt compared to Notre Dame’s best win being over now-No. 15 USC), Notre Dame’s losses to Texas A&M (No. 3 by the committee) and Miami (No. 13 by the committee) were better than Alabama’s losses to Georgia (No. 4 by the committee) and a 5-5 Florida State team.
(An aside: Remember that Miami beat that FSU team that Alabama lost to.)
The “quality losses” factor is also keeping Miami behind at least one other team in Utah. The Hurricanes have a slight edge over the Utes in strength of record (Miami’s 16 to Utah’s 18) and strength of schedule (Miami’s 43 to Utah’s 46). Miami has a win over a Notre Dame team that is among the top-10 in the committee’s eyes. Utah’s best win is against Arizona State, No. 25 by the committee.
But Utah’s losses are to Texas Tech and BYU, ranked Nos. 5 and 11 respectively, by a combined 27 points. Miami lost to Louisville and SMU by a combined nine points.
Advantage Utah, according to the committee.
“When you talk about two teams that are both 8-2 and you really don’t have a common opponent or a head-to-head matchup, you really look at the losses that Utah has compared to the losses that Miami has,” Yurachek said. “Obviously, there’s a 12 versus 13; they’re one spot apart. But I think the differentiator is the losses that Utah has versus the losses that Miami has.”
So could Miami’s head-to-head win over Notre Dame eventually become a factor? Theoretically, yes, if the committee deems Miami worthy of getting into the same “comparative pool” as Yurachek described it.
“If Miami and Notre Dame are in a comparable tier, a comparable range,” he said, “the head-to-head will be a significant data point that we will use.”
But what will need to happen for Miami to get there?
Yurachek stated the obvious first: Miami needs to win its next two games at Virginia Tech on Saturday (noon, ESPN) and at Pittsburgh on Nov. 29.
But from there? Yurachek said the Hurricanes need to “hope some things ahead of them fall their way.”
Translation: Miami needs some combination of Oklahoma, Alabama, Utah and/or BYU to lose in the coming weeks for the Hurricanes to move up enough so that their head-to-head win with Notre Dame is factored into rankings.
“I would say the No. 1 criteria in anything is always head-to-head,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “It’s why we play the game, right? So I think that always has been, and always will be, the number one factor in determining whatever [as it] relates to whatever.”
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