Metrics show Miami Hurricanes are a playoff-caliber team. Breaking it down
The Miami Hurricanes enter conference championship week on the bubble for the 12-team College Football Playoff.
Are they a playoff team? By the metrics and their resume, most likely.
But will they be a playoff team? It’s hard to tell even with the regular season concluded with so many teams competing for a few coveted spots.
Their fate is in the hands of the 12-person selection committee after they failed to reach the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game, the only chance to secure an automatic bid.
How should the committee view Miami?
As a reminder, the committee is supposed to select teams using a process that distinguishes among otherwise comparable teams by considering the following factors according to its website
- Strength of schedule
- Head-to-head competition
- Comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory)
- 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.
So let’s factor those in between Miami and the teams closest to it in the most recent committee rankings, so No. 8 Oklahoma, No. 9 Notre Dame, No. 10 Alabama, No. 11 BYU and No. 12 Miami. While the exact metrics the committee uses to determine strength of schedule and the ever undefinable “eye test,” we’ll use some publicly available metrics to help gauge where the Hurricanes fare compared to other playoff caliber teams.
The head to head and common opponent debates
Let’s start with the most obvious: Miami beat Notre Dame head-to-head. The teams have the same 10-2 record and the rest of their resumes, as will be explained below, are close to similar.
If that’s not enough: The team’s have four common opponents this season in Pittsburgh, NC State, Syracuse and Stanford.
Miami and Notre Dame each beat all four of those opponents. Miami beat Pittsburgh by 31, NC State by 34, Syracuse by 28 and Stanford by 35. Notre Dame beat Pittsburgh by 22, NC State by 29, Syracuse by 63 (of note: Syracuse was playing with its third-string quarterback in this game) and Stanford by 29.
While the committee’s own protocols say margin of victory isn’t supposed to be incentivized, CFP executive director Rich Clark on Tuesday said “margin of victory is taken into account up to 24 points, and that is accounted for in our data but only as it pertains to strength of schedule.”
“Sometimes margin of victory does come into play in the discussion,” Clark said, “but it is not a hard-and-fast rule. ... It’s not overly weighted in our discussions, but certainly it’s a factor when we’re watching a game and it’s a small factor in some of our data.”
As for Alabama, while the Crimson Tide are favored in most metrics over Miami (including strength of schedule), the teams do have a common opponent in Florida State. The Crimson Tide lost to the Seminoles 31-17, while UM beat FSU 28-22.
FPI
ESPN’s Football Power Index, abbreviated FPI, is “a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 20,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule.”
So during the season, it’s a predictive metric, but now that the regular season is over, the metric is essentially complete.
And Miami grades out well in the index. Miami ranks seventh nationally in FPI with a score of 20.8. However, that is behind both Notre Dame (No. 3, 25.0) and Alabama (No. 6, 21.5) but ahead of BYU (No. 15, 17.2) and Oklahoma (No. 16, 16.7).
Game Control and Average In-Game Win Probability
Game control is defined as “Reflect[ing] chance that an average Top 25 team would control games from start to end the way this team did, given the schedule.”
Average in-game win probability is defined as a “team’s average in-game win probability rank adjusted for chance that an average FBS team would control games from start to end the way this team did, given the schedule.”
Essentially, the better the ranking, the more often and more consistently a team has handled its business on the field from kickoff to the final whistle.
Miami ranks sixth nationally in both metrics. Notre Dame is fifth in both metrics. Alabama is 14th in game control and seventh in average in-game win probability. Oklahoma is 16th in game control and ninth in average in-game win probability. BYU is 24th in game control and 14th in average in-game win probability.
Overall efficiency
ESPN’s efficiency ratings put teams’ performance into a 0-100 scale that “incorporates offense, defense and special teams efficiencies into a single schedule-adjusted measure of per-play efficiency.”
Miami is seventh with a score of 85.0. Notre Dame is fifth (91.4), BYU 8th (84.8), Alabama 10th (84.3) and Oklahoma 13th (82.0).
Miami is one of eight teams ranked in the top 20 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. The full group: Indiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, Notre Dame, Miami, BYU, Alabama, Texas A&M.
Strength of Schedule/Strength of Record
Miami’s strength of record is 14th. One-loss BYU is sixth, while Alabama is eighth, Oklahoma ninth and Notre Dame 13th.
As for overall strength of schedule, Miami is 44th compared to 11th for Alabama, 12th for Oklahoma, 35th for BYU and 42nd for Notre Dame.
This story was originally published November 30, 2025 at 2:29 PM.
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