Cote: Irish eyes are crying but CFP got it right on Canes over Notre Dame | Opinion
Logic and common sense won on Sunday. Fairness did, too.
The Miami Hurricanes — after being the top team not included a year earlier — are headed to the 12-team College Football Playoff, UM the day’s biggest winner of all.
“There should not even be a debate,” UM coach Mario Cristobal had said.
Except there was that, a debate intense among the dozen members of the CFP selection committee, one that continued until 2:30 a.m. Sunday before resuming later that morning.
The debate: Miami, Notre Dame and Alabama were in contention for the final two of seven at-large bids not automatic for the five highest-ranked conference champions.
Alabama was highest ranked of the three even after Saturday’s SEC Championship Game loss to Georgia and expected to make it.
The final choice: Canes or Fighting Irish — the final decision at once logical, fair ... and stunning.
Choosing Miami was logical and fair because UM defeated Notre Dame 27-24 in the season opener, with head-to-head a priority tiebreaker. The game was not as close as the score suggested, as UM dominated both lines of scrimmage.
But the right choice was stunning because the 12-member CFP selection committee had consistently ranked the Irish ahead of the Canes in all of its weekly rankings until the final one Sunday.
Cristobal and his team hoped for good news Sunday but clearly did not assume or expect it. That’s why Miami did not have a team watch party on campus Sunday like most selected teams, because the fear was TV cameras would be recording a crestfallen, angry team rejected for a second straight year.
Cristobal admitted to “a little bit of anxiety” as he awaited the CFP’s final decision, “But overall,” he added, “we felt really confident. We felt confident because as long as everybody just abided by the criteria that we’d be in a good place. Thankfully, that was the case, and now we have this awesome opportunity.”
Instead of bemoaning being passed over by Notre Dame, a looming possibility, the UM family was celebrating the gift of a chance, a chance, to win the program’s long-elusive sixth national championship and first since 2001.
No. 10 seed Miami (10-2) will open the playoff Dec. 20 at No. 7 Texas A&M (11-1), with the home Aggies a slight favorite. UM would need to beat the Aggies, then beat No. 2 Ohio State in the quarterfinals, then win again in the semifinals finals to reach the CFP national championship game Jan. 19 ... at home ... at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.
The CFP is flawed. It plainly does not include the nation’s 12 best teams, or Tulsa and James Madison would not be in it. The selection system is rife with subjectivity.
A year ago Miami was on the wrong side of that.
Sunday, against odds, logic and fairness reigned, head-to-head mattered, and the Hurricanes are now three wins from playing for the national championship in their home stadium.
Just getting that chance that they’d earned on Sunday may have been the biggest victory of all.
This story was originally published December 7, 2025 at 1:15 PM.
