After being left out of this year’s 12-team College Football Playoff field, Notre Dame sent shockwaves throughout the college football world by announcing that it would decline a bowl invitation.
After the playoff was selected, Pop-Tarts Bowl organizers reportedly sought to match Notre Dame and BYU up in the Dec. 27 game, but the Fighting Irish chose to stay home.
Notre Dame is far from the first team to decline a postseason bid while being bowl eligible — just this year, Big 12 teams Iowa State and Kansas State said no to bowls — but it is the most high-profile team to do so.
Even Florida State, which was undefeated and snubbed from the four-team 2023 CFP in a controversial decision, at least showed up physically to its bowl game — though the Seminoles were blown out by Georgia.
In the lead-up to conference championship weekend, the Irish were ranked ahead of Miami and in line for a playoff berth. Both schools were idle last week, but after BYU lost to Texas Tech in the Big 12 championship game, Miami jumped Notre Dame in the final CFP rankings of the season.
Both schools had the same record, and Miami beat Notre Dame 27-24 in the first week of the season, so the decision to put Miami in over the Fighting Irish wasn’t indefensible.
What was puzzling was why the committee suddenly flipped them now, instead of in the previous rankings. Also mystifying is why 10-3 Alabama, which lost 28-7 in the SEC championship to Georgia, didn’t drop even a spot in the rankings.
In an interview with Yahoo Sports, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua didn’t hold back.
“There is no explanation that could possibly be given to explain the outcome,” Bevacqua said to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger.
“As I said to Marcus (Freeman), one thing is for sure: Any rankings or show prior to this last one is an absolute joke and a waste of time. Why put these young student-athletes through these false emotions just to pull the rug out from underneath them having not played a game in two weeks and then a group of people in a room shatter their dreams without explanation?
“We feel like the playoff was stolen from our student-athletes.”
Notre Dame’s decision to not play in a bowl game sparked an online firestorm.
Former NFL linebacker and current sports media personalty Emmanuel Acho blasted the Fighting Irish, calling the decision not to play “cowardly, immature and pathetic.”
In The Athletic, Chris Vannini wrote, “Notre Dame has taken its ball and gone home, and everyone is worse off for it.”
“... punting on finishing out the season because you got snubbed is short-sighted and embarrassing, and it removed any sympathy fans may have had for the Irish missing the Playoff field.”
Others, like former NFL quarterback and current sports pundit Robert Griffin III, defended Notre Dame’s decision not to play after being “snubbed” from the playoff.