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Everything for a price, they say.
There’s a cute pun in there for Notre Dame football, considering Jadarian Price is on their roster, but no one is in the mood for jokes in South Bend today.
The Irish were snubbed out of the 2025 College Football Playoff a year after making a run to the national championship game. The 12-team field got too crowded, and the Irish didn’t have the resume.
In the end, Miami leaped over Notre Dame because of the head-to-head win the Hurricanes had over Notre Dame. That makes sense.
Still, the final outcome was Notre Dame was left out of the College Football Playoff in favor of three-loss Alabama and Group of 5 James Madison. A continuation of the most talented run the Irish have been on in years ends without a chance to make a run at a national championship. Notre Dame declined a bowl berth. The Irish season is over.
This, however, is the price Notre Dame pays for its independence.
The Irish have every right to feel snubbed. But, that’s what happens when you give a head-scratching entity like the College Football Playoff committee the final say.
That's the price the Irish paid in 2025.
The backstory:
Notre Dame has every right to be angry.
Championship weekend went the way the Irish needed. BYU and Alabama lost, and Boise State won. That gave Notre Dame a win over a conference champion on its resume, and had the team the CFP committee placed over the Irish lose.
The committee watched Ohio State, BYU and Alabama lose in their respective championship games. Both the Tide and Cougars lost by multiple scores. The Buckeyes and Cougars dropped. Alabama did not.
A three-loss Alabama team that lost to 5-7 Florida State to open the year, struggled in wins over sub-.500 Auburn and South Carolina, lost to Oklahoma in November and mustered negative three (-3) rushing yards in a loss to Georgia in the SEC title game, where the Tide never threatened the Bulldogs.
The final AP Poll of the regular season spoke as such about Alabama. Here’s how the final AP rankings played out:
9. Notre Dame
10. Miami
11. Alabama
The AP voters believed the Tide should have dropped. The committee, in its confusing yet almighty deliverance Sunday morning on a televised selection show, said a 28-7 loss to Georgia in the SEC championship game wasn’t enough to drop the Crimson Tide.
This comes after the committee ranked Notre Dame over Miami for the entire month of November, and treated the Irish like their darlings with honeyed words like "The committee still feels that Notre Dame is a complete team, has been consistent throughout the season and deserves to be ranked where they are at No. 9 ahead of Alabama."
CFP Chair Hunter Yurachek said that on November 24. What changed in two weeks? Only the committee knows. It raises the question of whether the committee's statements can be trusted.
The other side:
Notre Dame has every right to be angry.
And, the Irish are. According to Yahoo Sports and ESPN, the Irish never expected to get left out after winning 10 games in a row. They declined a bowl game, which would have most likely aired on ESPN, where some ESPN entities have openly campaigned against the Irish for an entire month.
However, the anger can only carry them so far. This is the price Notre Dame pays as an independent.
Notre Dame started the season 0-2. That meant they did not control their own destiny in terms of making the CFP. That allowed the committee to pull the rug out from under Notre Dame after telling the Irish how much they valued them.
The counterpoint is simple: The Irish control their state of being. Notre Dame gets its own media rights deal with NBC. Notre Dame gets to make its schedule. Like we saw last season, when the Irish make the CFP, they pocket all the CFP earnings.
There’s no sharing it with UCLA, Arkansas or another conference member. The Irish pocketed $20 million with a trip to the national title game last season.
In all, it’s a price Notre Dame has to be willing to pay. They are, from what Irish leadership has said on the record before about its independence.
"We love being independent in football. It’s part of our DNA," Notre Dame director of athletics Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports. "We have zero intention of changing that. It’s part of who Notre Dame is. Quite frankly, this further cements our independence. We are out there fighting for ourselves. That’s something we accept."
The bottom line is simple for Notre Dame. If you’re 11-1 on the season, you’ll be in the playoff. At 10-2, that leaves you at the mercy of an unpredictable committee that wears compliments as a façade and favors a struggling SEC team over a Notre Dame team that had not stumbled since September.
Did Texas A&M get away with a hold? Did offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock weirdly leave plays for Heisman finalist Jeremiyah Love on the table? Sure. But, win one of those two games and you're in the CFP.
It’s a double-edged sword that hurt the Irish this season.
This could change in the future. Yahoo Sports and ESPN reported that Notre Dame signed a memorandum of understanding that Notre Dame will be included in the College Football Playoff next season if they’re ranked No. 12 or higher, no matter what.
Who knows how that would have worked this season, if at all? It's not worth wondering.
The book has officially closed on the 2025 season. The question will become if Marcus Freeman can rally that snub into motivation for next season with a rising star at quarterback, All-Americans on defense and a top-rated recruiting class.
Freeman has shown what he can do with a motivated Irish team. Last year, the Irish rallied from a loss to NIU and played for a national championship. This year, with his back against the wall, Freeman coached Notre Dame to 10 straight wins.
To avoid the wrong end of the double-edged independence sword, Freeman will have to show he can coach a motivated Irish team from August to November.