If it hasn't been evident, Notre Dame is a little upset for being excluded from this year's College Football Playoff. The Fighting Irish finished the season 10-2 and ranked No. 11 in the country but were the first team outside the 12-team bracket by virtue of the final two berths being awarded to the next highest ranked conference champions.
Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua took to the airwaves to slam the final rankings as a "farce" and took shots at the ACC for lobbying the selection committee to admit the Miami Hurricanes over his school. The Irish also refused to play in a bowl game, seemingly in protest.
Prior to conference championship weekend, Notre Dame was solidly in the field as the No. 10 seed, but fans were already nervous given the selection committee flipped them with No. 9 Alabama for seemingly no reason. Ultimately, remaining idle as an independent was detrimental and the committee chose to drop the Irish another spot behind Miami — which beat Notre Dame in Week 1 but had been ranked behind the boys from South Bend for the second half of the season.
Granted, Bevacqua and the Irish have good reason to feel stabbed in the back by the conference that has a football scheduling affiliation with the school and Notre Dame's membership in 24 other sports. However, the real culprit is getting away with their not-so-sneaky deed and receiving little heat from South Bend.
Notre Dame should be angry at the SEC, not the ACC, for its CFP snub
While the ACC did creatively lobby the committee by airing its opening week 27-24 win over Notre Dame repeatedly on its ESPN network, the SEC ridiculously tried to use its clout to turn the bracket into a conference invitational.
"I actually think we deserve seven [teams] in [the CFP].
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) December 6, 2025
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey shares his thoughts on how many teams should make the CFP 👀 pic.twitter.com/wcyo21iqJT
“I actually think we deserve seven [teams] in [the CFP],” Sankey said Saturday. “This league is different. The expectations are different. The competition is different. And the rewards should respect each of those elements.”
It was that superiority complex that created the rankings conundrum on the bubble in the final weeks in the first place. Sankey's posturing and preposterous assertion was indulged by the committee when it decided to keep 9-3 Texas and 10-2 Vanderbilt within striking distance of the final at-large bids.
If there's anyone Notre Dame should be aiming its ire at it's the SEC. The conference has been trying to monopolize the playoff since its inception and if the Big Ten didn't exist, it would get its way. All the ACC did was say, "Hey, our best team may not have played in the conference championship game due to our convoluted tiebreakers but it beat a team in the field and has the same record as said team. Miami should be in."
That's a valid argument to be made but the SEC continually gets the benefit of its name brand when three-loss squads like Alabama should be left out (don't give me the conference championship excuse, the committee excluded an 11-2 BYU team that played in the Big 12 title game).
Notre Dame has every right to be angry at its exclusion. They put together one of the best seasons and fell victim to conference politics yet again. The ACC deserves some blame, but the Irish have to know the powers that be are more easily swayed by the folks in the South than those on the East coast.