College Football Playoff leaving out Notre Dame irritates legendary QB

The College Football Playoff bracket was announced Sunday and officials sparked controversy when the Notre Dame Fighting Irish were left out despite only two losses — one to the Miami Hurricanes and another to the Texas A&M Aggies.

The Hurricanes and Aggies were in the field of 12. Miami moved ahead of Notre Dame in the final rankings despite the Fighting Irish being on the field when the penultimate rankings were released. Neither team had a conference championship game to play before the official field was vacated.

The debate over Notre Dame and Miami has taken place in recent weeks. Who would make the Playoffs? Miami had the overall head-to-head advantage.

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Former Notre Dame star quarterback Joe Theismann told PK Press Club Digital he was “in disbelief” when he saw the Fighting Irish outside the bracket. He added that pundits talking about the College Football Playoff are missing one question: How can an Alabama Crimson Tide team with three losses make the playoffs?

“How can they be so wrong? I just have a hard time believing you’re going to put a three-loss team in the playoffs,” he said. “Miami goes in? Fine. Notre Dame should have been there. Now all of a sudden you’re going to turn the conversation into a head-to-head competition in the first game of the year? Well, what about Florida State losing Alabama in the first game of the year? Didn’t anyone talk about that? Wasn’t that part of the conversation? I just think it’s so wrong.”

Ultimately, Theismann felt bad for head coach Marcus Freeman and the players he coaches and pointed out that Notre Dame didn’t have a bad loss.

The Fighting Irish lost to the Hurricanes and Aggies by a combined four points. Alabama, on the other hand, was throttled by Florida State in the season opener, then lost by two to the Oklahoma Sooners.

Notre Dame QB Joe Theismann (7) in action against USC at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles on November 30, 1968. (Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

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Alabama reached the SEC Championship, but lost by 21 points to Georgia.

“I feel like I’m a person who tries to be really objective when it comes to analyzing situations,” Theismann said. “Alabama’s participation in this makes no sense.”

College Football Playoff Committee Chairman Hunter Yurachek, who is also the athletic director at Arkansas which also plays in the SEC, defended Alabama’s place as the No. 9 ranked school during the selection show. He said the Crimson Tide’s “body of work” was enough to get in.

“Despite their performance yesterday in the conference championship, they deserved to qualify in that ninth place,” he said.

Yurachek added that the committee flipped Miami against Notre Dame after BYU lost to Texas Tech in the Big 12 championship, 34-7.

“Once we put Miami ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everyone was hungry for, Notre Dame and Miami,” he said. “And when you look at these two teams on paper, they are almost equal, in terms of strength of schedule, in terms of common opponents, in terms of results against common opponents, but the only metric we had to rely on was head-to-head.”

Tulane and James Madison were the other conference champions to take the field. Duke, the ACC champions, was not selected.

Notre Dame decided to forgo the opportunity to play in a bowl game after being left out of the College Football Playoff. Theismann said he had no problem with the decision.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman (middle) leads the team onto the field to face the Pittsburgh Panthers at Acrisure Stadium on November 15, 2025. (Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images)

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“Not at all,” he told PK Press Club Digital. “I respect and admire the decision.”