With their regular season complete, the Miami Hurricanes’ chances at the playoffs are on life support. But there is still a chance UM can make it into the field.
“Absolutely (the Hurricanes have a chance),” Miami coach Mario Cristobal said Wednesday. “And for the right reason. We’re very realistic. Let’s call it what it is: In the history of the CFP, there’s never been a situation where two Power 4, Power 5 teams with the same record that had a head-to-head, never has the loser advanced and the winner been kept behind.”
Miami stayed put at No. 12 in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings. Given the state of the field, the Hurricanes will need BYU and Alabama to lose their conference title games and hope the selection committee slides UM into the No. 10 spot.
The Hurricanes need to reach No. 10 because two teams — either the ACC champion and a Group of 5 team or two Group of 5 teams — will slide into the bracket above them in the final rankings.
Although UM was not in position to make the playoffs on Tuesday, things can change in the final rankings after the conference championship games, committee chair Hunter Yurachek said.
“Idle teams can move based on the results of the championship games,” Yurachek said, “And there may be something that happens in a championship game that impacts an idle team, whether that’s their strength of schedule or some other data point that we use.”
Two teams ranked near Miami are playing in conference title games: No. 11 BYU faces No. 4 Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game, and No. 9 Alabama faces No. 3 Georgia in the SEC championship.
If the Cougars lose to the Red Raiders, the committee could drop BYU behind Miami. If Alabama wins against Georgia, the Hurricanes and Fighting Irish — who are currently the last at-large team in the field — could flip positions based on the value of Miami’s win over Notre Dame in Week 1.
“It’s obviously easier to use that data point when the teams are back-to-back as opposed to when they’re separated by a team or two or three, as has been the case,” Yurachek said.
Miami is ranked 12th despite its 10-2 record — identical to No. 10 Notre Dame (a team UM beat in Week 1), No. 8 Oklahoma and Alabama. BYU is 11th despite being 11-1.
“The committee still felt like right now Notre Dame deserves to be ranked ahead of BYU and Miami, and BYU deserves to be ranked ahead of Miami,” Yurachek said.
Yurachek went on to say that the committee is comparing Alabama, BYU, Notre Dame and Miami as a group.
“If we were just comparing Miami and Notre Dame side by side, it’s a little bit easier to use (the head-to-head result as a) comparison,” Yurachek said.
“But we’re not comparing Notre Dame and Miami side by side. We’re comparing … Alabama, Notre Dame, BYU and Miami collectively and evaluating those teams and how they look. And so when you put all of those teams together, the committee has felt for the past several weeks that Notre Dame now — again the winners of 10 straight and really dominating on both sides of the ball in those 10 wins. — and then BYU, an 11-1 team with really strong strength of schedule and record strength metrics, wins over a couple of top 25 teams, deserve to be ranked higher than Miami.
“And so that’s why we had that order of Miami, 10 and BYU, 11. Miami, again, they entered our first poll losers of two or three games and they entered in at 18. I think the committee has given a great deal of respect to Miami, bringing them from 18 to 12 this week after winning four consecutive games and looking really good in doing so. They looked really good this past weekend against Pittsburgh, but it was not and has not been enough for them to get ahead of BYU and/or Notre Dame.”
Immediately after Miami beat Pittsburgh on the road last weekend, coach Mario Cristobal, UM players and athletic director Dan Radakovich started lobbying for the Hurricanes to make the playoffs.
“This is a College Football Playoff team,” Cristobal said in a post-game interview with ABC. “We’ve all seen it. We know it.”
Cristobal spent the past two days going on multiple sports talk shows and podcasts to explain why he thinks the Hurricanes deserve a spot in the playoffs for the first time.
He was not alone.
The ACC has been lobbying for Miami to make the playoffs for weeks. This week, the conference was joined by numerous media personalities, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Secretary of State — and former Florida senator — Marco Rubio.
“If the University of Miami gets screwed out of the College Football Playoff after going 10-2 and beating Notre Dame, the whole thing should be scrapped and (President Donald Trump is) going to have to take over it next year,” Rubio said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Cristobal said he appreciated Rubio’s support.
“You know that there’s a lot of reality behind it when a Florida Gator speaks up for a Miami Hurricane,” Cristobal said.
Here is the penultimate CFP ranking:
1. Ohio State
2. Indiana
3. Georgia
4. Texas Tech
5. Oregon
6. Ole Miss
7. Texas A&M
8. Oklahoma
9. Alabama
10. Notre Dame
11. BYU
12. Miami
13. Texas
14. Vanderbilt
15. Utah
16. USC
17. Virginia
18. Arizona
19. Michigan
20. Tulane
21. Houston
22. Georgia Tech
23. Iowa
24. North Texas
25. James Madison
