‘The truth spoke loudly’: How Hurricanes made their College Football Playoff case
Mario Cristobal typically tries to isolate himself and his Miami Hurricanes team from any outside noise. He usually doesn’t care what people outside the program are saying about them, good or bad. The only voices that matter in most cases are inside their building.
This wasn’t most cases, though.
Last week, Cristobal at a minimum was aware about the discussion surrounding the Hurricanes. How could he not? They were part of college football’s biggest debate, and he needed Miami to be on the winning end of it.
The argument — one Cristobal didn’t think needed to occur in the first place — ended in the Hurricanes favor, and their chance to win a national championship is alive because of it.
The result was Miami receiving the No. 10 seed — the final at-large bid — into the College Football Playoff over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. That decision came despite the 12-person CFP selection committee having the Fighting Irish higher than the Hurricanes in each of their first five rankings before finally flipping the two in the final — and, in reality, most important — ranking.
Miami (10-2) will face the No. 7 seed Texas A&M Aggies (11-1) on Dec. 20 at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas (noon, ABC) to begin their postseason run.
“This year, I felt like all the facts should be speaking for us,” Cristobal said a few hours after the playoff field was released Sunday. “We didn’t have to create any kind of angle or post or anything. I felt it was just a matter of the information repeatedly being placed on the laps of the decision makers, because we always thought it was enough.”
The rationale that led to Miami being in and Notre Dame being out: The committee finally took into consideration the simplest factor of deciding between teams who had identical 10-2 records and were nearly equal in the rest of the metrics.
Miami beat Notre Dame head-to-head, a 27-24 win on Aug. 31.
“The most important thing in all the sports — and anything competitive in the world — is head-to-head in terms of a winner and loser,” Cristobal said Dec. 3 in one of his final public pleas.
That point was made by Cristobal and the college football world at large.
Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich, a one-time member of the CFP selection committee, laid out the statistics for his school’s case.
The Atlantic Coast Conference vouched for its member school, backing up the Hurricanes’ case through a social media campaign.
The majority of prominent college football voices were on Miami’s side, too.
While Miami-Notre Dame was the primary argument, cases were made for why Miami should be in over other teams on the bubble, including Alabama (citing the Crimson Tide’s loss to Florida State, a team Miami beat) and BYU (citing Miami’s signature win over Notre Dame being better than BYU’s top win over Utah). There was also debate for why both Miami and Notre Dame should be in the field. Alabama ultimately got the No. 9 seed, squeezing out Notre Dame and BYU from playoff contention.
“We felt that this year we had a case that didn’t need to go to court,” Cristobal said. “And we just felt that, ‘OK, it’s loud everywhere. Let’s make sure that the volume is turned up on the facts, on the real stuff.’ ... The truth spoke loudly.”
Cristobal is thankful the Hurricanes are in this position. His players are, too.
“When I say we’re fired up,” Cristobal said, “that might be the understatement of the year.”
But not long after the news broke, the celebration quickly subdued.
The focus shifted back to solely what was going on inside their building. The outside noise and talking points are non-factors again.
The preparation for the next step has already begun.
“It was a unique week in many, many ways,” Cristobal said, “but here we are.”
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