After weeks of sitting inside the top 10 of the College Football Playoff rankings, Notre Dame received the news it had hoped to avoid. On final selection day, the Fighting Irish were left out of the 12-team field, with Miami landing the No. 10 ranking — effectively the cut-off line — leaving Notre Dame as the first team out.
For weeks, the debate centered on which team deserved the final at-large spot: Notre Dame or Miami. Both finished 10-2 and were closely aligned in strength of schedule and other metrics. But Miami held the trump card with its head-to-head win over the Irish in Week 1.
That metric appeared to be secondary until the final reveal, when No. 11 BYU — the buffer between No. 12 Miami and No. 10 Notre Dame — lost the Big 12 Championship to No. 4 Texas Tech.
“You look at those two teams on paper, and they’re almost equal in their schedule strength, their common opponents, their results against their common opponents. But the one metric we had to fall back on again was the head-to-head,” CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek said.
Naturally, Notre Dame is frustrated — so much so that the Irish have opted out of playing in a bowl game. Athletic director Pete Bevacqua has not held back in expressing the program’s displeasure, including with the ACC.
ACC’s Relationship With Notre Dame May Be in Trouble
During an appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show” on December 8, Bevacqua said there is now “permanent damage” between Notre Dame and the ACC.
“We were mystified by the actions of the conference to attack really their biggest business partner in football and a member of their conference in 24 of our other sports,” Bevacqua told Patrick. “I gotta tell you Dan, I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t say they’ve certainly done permanent damage to our relationship between the conference and Notre Dame.”
When Patrick asked what he meant, Bevacqua clarified:
“We didn’t appreciate the fact that we were singled out repeatedly and compared by Miami — Miami has every right to do that — but it raised a lot of eyebrows here that the conference was taking shots at us. And that’s just not something we chose to do, we wouldn’t choose to do that in the future.”
Will the ACC and Notre Dame Continue Their Partnership?
Notre Dame’s partnership with the ACC dates back to 2014 and includes membership in 24 sports while allowing the Irish to remain independent in football. Even so, the program faces several ACC opponents every year. In 2025, Notre Dame played six ACC teams.
Now, that arrangement feels uncertain. The ACC appeared to go out of its way to promote Miami over Notre Dame during the selection debate. The ACC Network aired the Week 1 Miami–Notre Dame game 13 times ahead of the final rankings. The conference’s social media accounts also heavily circulated pro-Miami messaging that implicitly pushed the committee to side against the Irish.
For now, Notre Dame remains scheduled to face Miami again on November 7, 2026. The Irish also have North Carolina, Boston College, SMU, Syracuse and Stanford out of the ACC. But after this playoff cycle, the stability of that partnership is very much in question.
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