The College Football Playoff selection committee made a baffling change in the rankings before unveiling the final 12-team bracket on Sunday, and Hunter Yurachek made the situation worse with the explanation he gave for what transpired.
The final regular-season College Football Playoff rankings were released on Tuesday night. Notre Dame was ranked 10th and Miami was ranked 12th. Notre Dame does not have a conference affiliation and Miami did not reach the ACC Championship Game, so neither team played a game between the final CFP rankings and the unveiling of the playoff bracket.
Even with nothing changing for Miami and Notre Dame since Tuesday’s rankings, the Hurricanes jumped ahead of the Fighting Irish in the final rankings. Miami made the playoff as the 10 seed, while Notre Dame was the first team left out.
Ultimately, the committee decided that Miami deserved to be ranked ahead of Notre Dame because the two teams played earlier this season, and Miami won 27-24. But that means Miami should have been ranked ahead of Notre Dame when Tuesday’s rankings were released as well.
So what changed? Yurachek, the chair of the CFP selection committee, was asked that question by ESPN’s Rece Davis, and he offered a completely bogus rationale. Yurachek said that once BYU lost to Texas Tech in the Big 12 Championship Game, that allowed the CFP selection committee to see Notre Dame and Miami side-by-side in the rankings and compare the two teams directly.
“The first move in that was we felt the way BYU performed in their championship game, a second loss to Texas Tech in a similar fashion, was worthy of Miami moving ahead of them in the rankings. And once we moved Miami moved ahead of BYU, then we had that side-by-side comparison that everybody had been hungering for with Notre Dame and Miami,” Yurachek said. “You look at those two teams on paper and they’re almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, the results against their common opponents, but the one metric we had to fall back on, again, was the head-to-head.”
.@CFBPlayoff Selection Committee chair Hunter Yurachek breaks down what went into the decision for 10-seed Miami to make the playoffs 👀 pic.twitter.com/DFo7K18Wna
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) December 7, 2025
That’s right, Yurachek is claiming the selection committee could not properly evaluate Miami and Notre Dame against one another until the two teams were physically side-by-side in the rankings.
Yurachek would have been better off owning it and saying committee members changed their minds and came to their senses. Most people agree that Miami deserved to make the CFP over Notre Dame because of the head-to-head game. The committee got it right, but they embarrassed themselves by creating a situation where they had to flip Notre Dame and Miami in the rankings despite neither team playing a game.
